User:Asifs8/sandbox/Alifa (2016 film)

Alifa (Bengali: আলিফা) is a Indian Bengali drama feature film written and directed by Deep Choudhary and produced by Armaan Ahmed. It stars Baharul Islam and Jaya Seal.

Alifa is a saga of human-wildlife conflict competing with basic questions of love, hatred, dreams and desires as well as the frailties of human nature and wider social bonding.

Alifa won the Best Debut Film of A Director award by Deep Choudhary in the 64th National Film Awards.

Plot
Ali (Baharul Islam), a daily wage earner living in the vicinity of a sprawling city, has to cope with uncertainty, hardship and abuses. He is at the mercy of a forest guard for not being evicted from his family's new-found habitat in a green hilly area overlooking the city. He finds solace in his hardworking, young wife, Fatima (Jaya Seal) and their two children, Alifa and Faisal. Ali is used to create stories to answer queries by his children about the night sky and about his past. His stories hide his inability to understand nature - for deep down his senses there is the real story of sorrow, as his riverside village is now extinct due to heavy flood and erosion. But he is little aware that most cruel troubles are brewing and about to threaten their meek existence. It remains an impossible task to enroll his daughter Alifa and son Faisal in primary school despite his wife Fatima working as a construction labour.

As fate would have it, Fatima developed an affair with a co-worker that caused grave injury to Ali's faith and longing for her. Meanwhile in a dramatic turn of events Ali and his neighbours in the hills are forced to spend sleepless nights for fear of a prowling leopard that came out of the woods. What follows is the hardest fate befalling Ali's family.

Cast

 * Baharul Islam
 * Jaya Seal
 * Victor Banerjee
 * Prasun Gayen
 * Satya Ranjan
 * Pakija Hasmi
 * Rayan Abdul
 * Swapna Dey
 * Mahmuda Begum
 * Tajmal Hussain

Critical response
NEZine.com writes about Alifa as "Alifa- in search of hope and humanity amidst chaos and despair" - NEZine.com

Accolades
The film was screened at 22nd Kolkata International Film Festival http://www.kff.in/film.php?f=435

Awards and nominations

 * 64th National Film Awards
 * Best Debut Film of A Director - Deep Choudhury - Alifa (2016)