Bangla (film)

Bangla is a 2019 Italian film directed by Phaim Bhuyian. The film premiered at the 2019 International Film Festival Rotterdam.

This movie gets the director, Phaim Bhuyian David di Donatello Award for Best New Director in 2020. In 13 April 2022, Bangla - La serie was released on RaiPlay, produced by Fandango and Rai Fiction. A series sequel of the film having the same director, cast and characters.

Plot
The film features the struggles of a 22-year-old man in Rome. Phaim, played by the Director, to balance his Bengali background, the religious restrictions of Islam and Ramadan, with meeting a progressive young Italian girl, 'Asia' with whom he falls in love.

Phaim was born in Rome and in the film he and his friends speak Italian, but his parents are traditional and he does not reveal his relationship to them. He works in a museum, and in his free time, performs with his band at small events.

He meets Asia at his band's first proper gig. Their relationship blossoms and he meets her eccentric family and her friends. But he insults her after getting drunk for the first time. He then discovers his sister and his bandmate are both reluctantly engaged in arranged marriages, and he accepts an arranged date with a Bengali girl, Mala. They joke about their other partners, and nothing else happens between them. His parents decide to move to London, but his ex band-mate who already moved there says life is not great, and he moves back to Rome. This improves the band markedly, and they play a gig at a Bengali wedding, where Phaim fantasizes about Asia while on stage. The next day, at the mosque, the young Imam who had counselled Phaim to leave the sin of a relationship with Asia confesses he was himself in a relationship with an Italian girl who he loves, but is suffering regret for breaking it off. This precipitates Phaim to run to Asia's apartment where they passionately make out.