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About Director
Mohammad Monir Hossain is a Screenwriter, Director, Motion Graphic Artist and Photographer based in Bangladesh. Although Monir was born and raised in Dhaka, a metropolitan city and the capital of Bangladesh, he has a deep connection with the rural culture of Bangladesh. Therefore, villages and people living in rural setting are portrayed repeatedly in his art. As a film lover, he focused on understanding various aspects of cinema in his youth. He has attended courses and workshops on Scriptwriting, Film Direction, Producing, Production Design, Sound Design, Editing, Film Marketing and Distribution provided by local, national and foreign institutes and organizations. Monir has recently completed his first short film titled The Reader. The Reader is a story about a young boy named Alim; a book-loving library cleaner who was unable to study due to poverty, who faces the intense wrath of the librarian because of his passion for reading. Monir has recently developed a feature film script titled Punishment supervised by Italian producer and director Giovanni Robbiano. Apart from this, he has also developed scripts for three more short films. Mohammad Monir Hossain has been working as a senior Motion Graphic Artist in a reputed television channel in Bangladesh for a long time. He has a in depth understanding of visual communication, color, composition due to his professional experience in graphic design.
Synopsis
Alim, son of a poor farmer, has a strong passion for story books. He fail to continue his studies because of penury and is forced to work at a tender age to earn bread. Incidentally, Alim gets appointed in a library as a cleaner. He has been staying aloof from books due to poverty, but he is now in its kingdom. He finds reading books more rewarding than working. But Nazmul the librarian doesn’t accept that. One day, Alim chooses to revolt, to change his luck.
Director's Statement
To be a Film Director is a long-cherished dream to me. I want my cinema to act like a mirror where prevailing socio-political disparities and discrimination will be reflected. I want to see people prospering and living a better life. Incoherence among social hierarchy and agonies of other human beings sadden me. This fellow feeling has inspired me to tell these inflicting stories using cinema as an apparatus. Right to education is one of the five basic rights of a citizen, though we see, many people stay illiterate due to socio-economic causes. One of my childhood friends named Alam had to drop out of school because of same reason, though, he had dreamt of being educated. Losing his father at a tender age, he had to face fierce reality and had to drop out from study nipping his dream in the bud. Many people are deprived of their right to education like Alam. Many people give up on their dreams. The Reader, in fact, is a story about the price someone pays for honesty. Whenever a citizen is deprived of his/her basic rights and demands, s/he tries to fulfill those demands in different alternative ways. Sometimes, the ways adopted might not be legal in a strict sense. But, when a naive person wants to undo his/her misdeed out of repentance, the system often penalizes them rigorously. I have portrayed such a character in my film The Reader who pays a much heavier price for a trivial offense. I believe that the film will provide insights for responsible people in authorities to think from a new perspective to eradicate prevailing problems in the roots.