How ‘Rehana Maryam Noor’ Became the First Bangladeshi Film at Cannes

No Bangladeshi film had ever been selected for competition at the Cannes Film Festival until Rehana Maryam Noor made it into the Un Certain Regard section in 2021 — a section reserved for original, boundary-pushing work — becoming the first Bangladeshi feature to screen there.

Directed by Abdullah Mohammad Saad in his second feature, the film follows Rehana, a 37-year-old assistant professor at a medical college, played by Azmeri Haque Badhon, after she witnesses a sexual assault involving both a colleague she knows and a student she knows. Rather than a conventional thriller, the film builds its tension around Rehana’s escalating, morally tangled response — a performance critics described as teetering between fierce advocacy and personal obsession.

The film’s premiere at the 74th Cannes Film Festival on 9 July 2021 ended in a standing ovation, a reception rare enough for any debut appearance from a national cinema that had never previously competed at Cannes in any section. International reviews, including from The Hollywood Reporter and RogerEbert.com, singled out Badhon’s performance as the film’s anchor — a demanding, largely solo turn carrying nearly every scene.

For Bangladeshi cinema, Rehana Maryam Noor‘s selection did something no prior festival placement had managed: it put a Bangladeshi film, and a Bangladeshi actress, into direct competition on one of the industry’s largest global stages, at a section explicitly built around discovering new cinematic voices rather than showcasing established ones.