Young Bangladeshi filmmakers win two awards at Dhaka DocLab 2019

Abid Sarker Shohag and Sardar Zahidul Islam’s documentary film project, Songs of Sunflower, has won the Best Bangladeshi Project Award and Best Pitch Award at Dhaka DocLab 2019.

Songs of Sunflower tells the story of a blind husband and a musician who flirts with life and preaches how to see the world. The documentary film captures the battle of the musician and how he ends up writing more than a thousand songs, depicting the socio-cultural reality of the country. His garment worker wife, embracing the misery, tries her best to look after their family.

Songs of Sunflower is an attempt to illustrate how the unlikely couple’s engagement with the world exhibits the colours of life that are often unseen and ignored. It is the debut feature project of the filmmaker duo. They have finished their graduation in English Literature from Jahangirnagar University. Both of them have been actively involved with Zahir Raihan Film Society. They are also among the organisers of Bodhichitta, a platform for popular discourse series on philosophy.

For the third consecutive year, Dhaka DocLab has arranged six-day workshops and co-produced a platform for South Asian documentary filmmakers. The event opened on August 31.