A Stark, Introspective Journey into Familial Estrangement and Modern Solitude

In Agantuk (2023), director Biplob Sarkar crafts an unflinching portrait of familial rupture and existential loneliness, wrapped in the quiet, everyday textures of Bangladeshi life. Premiering in the New Currents section at the 2023 Busan International Film Festival and more recently at the Bangladesh Panorama section of the 23rd Dhaka International Film Festival, Agantuk presents itself not merely as a story about a family but as a meditation on abandonment, memory, and the aching space between belonging and estrangement.

Kajol is a thoughtful 10-year-old boy. He lives in a small, quiet home with his mother and a sick grandmother. Their life is balanced but straightforward—until one day, his father returns. He had been gone for years. Now he comes back like a stranger. His arrival doesn’t bring peace. Instead, it stirs up old pain and quiet tension. At first, Kajol is upset. He avoids his father and keeps his distance. But slowly, things begin to change. The coldness between them starts to fade. Their relationship grows warmer, more affectionate. Kajol starts to let his father into his little world—a world full of rhythms shaped by his bond with his mother, his friendship with a classmate, and his love for his grandmother. 

Director Biplob Sarkar paints this world with great care. He shows the beauty of rural Bangladesh in soft, touching images. One scene stands out. Kajol is putting on lipstick with his grandmother. They are laughing and enjoying a quiet moment. His father watches from afar. He doesn’t say anything, but we see the emotion in his eyes. It’s a powerful moment. Without any words, we feel the connection beginning to return. It’s one of the most beautiful scenes in the film. Sarkar captures something deep with just a simple image.

Sarkar’s direction is deeply humanistic, with a restrained aesthetic favoring stillness and silence over exposition. This tonal minimalism works to remarkable effect. The father’s re-entry into the household doesn’t follow a typical arc of reconciliation or redemption; instead, Sarkar positions him as an enigma—neither fully antagonist nor victim, but a symbol of unspoken grief and unresolved histories. In this, the film resists narrative closure, embracing ambiguity with artistic maturity.

The performances are uniformly powerful, particularly from the young actor, Ehan Rashid, portraying Kajol, whose gaze, both innocent and probing, guides the emotional rhythm of the film. His interactions with his mother reveal layers of dependency and disillusionment, especially as she grapples with the reappearance of a man she had emotionally buried long ago. Veteran actress Ferdousi Majumder has called the film “bold and courageous,” and rightly so: Agantuk does not seek to comfort its audience. Instead, it interrogates how wounds persist when apologies come too late, or not at all.

Shot during the shadow of the pandemic, Agantuk absorbs the heightened sense of isolation that defined those years. Sarkar acknowledges this, suggesting that the film is haunted by detachment, not only between people but also between people and their creations. The cinematography mirrors this ethos, framing characters at thresholds, through doorways, and behind half-closed windows, evoking the sense of always being on the verge but never fully present.

Though modest in scale, the film’s scope is thematically expansive. It invites comparison to the works of Iranian filmmakers such as Majid Majidi or Asghar Farhadi, who similarly explore the collision of personal ethics and familial bonds against a backdrop of social realism. Yet, Agantuk maintains its distinct voice, grounded in rural-urban Bangladesh’s linguistic and cultural particularities. In an industry often dominated by commercial templates and melodrama, Agantuk emerges as a rare, contemplative work, precise in its filmmaking and generous in its emotional intelligence. It is a story told with empathy, and perhaps more importantly, with trust in its audience’s capacity to sit with discomfort and unanswered questions.

With Agantuk, Biplob Sarkar not only announces his arrival as a serious auteur in Bangladeshi cinema but also contributes to the broader South Asian cinematic conversation—a conversation about memory, home, and the strangers we become to those we once loved.

Fatema Amin
Edited by Ela Bittencourt
© FIPRESCI 2025