Filmmaker · Producer · Scholar

Rubaiyat
Hossain

A feminist intervention in cinema — reframing the gaze and turning the camera toward the women history has too often left unseen. From Bangladesh to the world.

↓ The filmsMeherjaan · Under Construction · Shimu · Difficult Bride
Rubaiyat Hossain

Dhaka · New York · Northampton

Cannes/Toronto/Locarno/Berlinale/Torino/Amiens/Vesoul/Dhaka/Harvard/Asia Pacific Screen Awards/Cannes/Toronto/Locarno/Berlinale/Torino/Amiens/Vesoul/Dhaka/Harvard/Asia Pacific Screen Awards/
Now in postThe next film
Difficult Bride — film still
Fondazione Prada Film Fund — Selected 2025

Difficult Bride

Dir. Rubaiyat Hossain · In post-production

In Dhaka, Zaineen prepares for her wedding — moving through the rituals of beauty and the weight of family expectation. But her body answers in ways unbidden and disturbing. Between home remedies, social pressure, and unsettling visions, the road to the altar becomes a reckoning, physical and psychic, with everything imposed on her — until the body itself seems to choose its own direction.

“A film twenty-one years in the making. It lived with me for half my life.”

Rubaiyat Hossain
Production
François D'Artemare · Les Films de l'Après-Midi (FR)
Co-production
Khona Talkies (BD) · Midas Filmes (PT) · Tandem Production (DE) · Barentsfilm (NO)
Selection
Fondazione Prada Film Fund — Selected 2025

Statement

I make films to deconstruct the otherwise phallocentric institution of cinema — to put the female gaze where it has so rarely been allowed to rest.

My work moves through social realism toward something quieter and more unsettling: the interior lives of Bengali women — their desire, their refusal, their labour, their grief. I am drawn to the fault lines where Bengali modernity meets construction of femininity and where the grand narratives of nationalism fall silent about the women who lived them.

A theatre actress who refuses motherhood. A garment worker who refuses to stop organising. A child of war who returns home to ask the unaskable. A bride whose own body revolts against ritual. Each is a woman whom history, culture, or family would rather not confront directly. So the camera does.

I see cinema as a feminist intervention — not as a slogan, but as a method. A way of framing the world. A way of redistributing attention. A way of insisting that the lives, bodies, and memories of women are not marginal to history, but central to it.

“I always want to be identified as a woman. I think every person has one battle to fight — and I have always picked my battle to be a woman.”

Rubaiyat Hossain

A filmmaker, writer, and interdisciplinary researcher. Before the camera there were the movements — years with Bangladesh's women's rights organisations, Ain o Salish Kendra and Naripokkho. She studied Women's Studies at Smith, South Asia at Penn, and Cinema at NYU's Tisch; she lives and works between Dhaka and New York. Founder of Khona Talkies and of Sultana's Dream. In 2023, only the second woman in Bangladesh's history to win the National Award for Best Director.

Filmography

2011 — 2024
Difficult Bride poster
202488 minIn post-production

Difficult Bride

Writer · Director · Producer · France · Bangladesh · Norway · Germany · USA

Days from her wedding, Zaineen — a bride-to-be in her mid-twenties — loves her groom and longs for a fairytale wedding, even as her body revolts, grotesquely, against the bridal rituals. A long-haired woman begins to appear at the edge of her mind.

A feminist supernatural drama. “A film twenty-one years in the making — it lived with me for half my life.”

“A feminist supernatural drama about vulnerability, bodily autonomy, and the violence of ritual.”

Variety, 2025
  • ✦Fondazione Prada Film Fund — Selected 2025
  • ✦Les Arcs Film Festival — Work-in-Progress
  • ✦5-country co-production
Made in Bangladesh poster
201995 min

Made in Bangladesh/ Shimu

Writer · Director · Co-producer · Bangladesh · France · Denmark · Portugal

Shimu, twenty-three, sews clothes the world will wear. Faced with brutal conditions on the factory floor, she sets out to start a union with her co-workers — against the management's threats and her husband's disapproval. She must find a way.

Premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival; distributed by Pyramide Films. Named by the Criterion Collection a hidden gem of the 2010s.

“The Norma Rae we need now.”

Cameron Bailey, TIFF
  • ✦Toronto International Film Festival
  • ✦National Film Award — Best Director (2023)
  • ✦Norwegian Peace Film Award — Tromsø
  • ✦Interfedi Award — Torino
  • ✦UNESCO Award nominee — APSA
Under Construction poster
201588 min

Under Construction

Writer · Director · Producer · Bangladesh

Roya, a theatre actress in contemporary Dhaka, chafes against her husband's wish for children and a traditional life. Uninterested in motherhood, she sets out to reconstruct a famous, politically charged play for modern times — and reclaims her identity in the process.

A reckoning with the female artist's choice between creative and procreative life, staged by relocating Tagore's Red Oleanders to the readymade garment industry of contemporary Dhaka.

“Can someone re-interpret something as traditional as Rabindranath Tagore?”

Rubaiyat Hossain
  • ✦Best Emerging Director — AAIFF, New York
  • ✦Prix du Jury International — Vesoul
  • ✦Best Audience Award — Dhaka IFF
  • ✦Premio Luna — Festival bajo la Luna, Spain
  • ✦National Award — Best Dialogue (Bangladesh)
Meherjaan poster
2011119 min

Meherjaan

Writer · Director · Producer · Bangladesh

A war child returns. Sarah — born of the 1971 Liberation War — comes back to piece together her past, and Meher cannot turn her away. Together, two women revisit their stories to cut through the stigmas and walk into the light.

A debut that dared a feminine perspective on the 1971 war, and on female desire within it. It was pulled from theatres after a single week amid national furore — and went on to screen at Harvard and festivals worldwide.

“A feminine perspective on war, nationalism, and the female body — critical of the narratives that erase them.”

South Asian Filmscapes, Univ. of Washington Press
  • ✦Keynote screening — Harvard University
  • ✦London Asian Film Festival
  • ✦Best Critic Award — Jaipur IFF

Projects in development

In development

What comes next — across fiction, science fiction, virtual reality, and, for the first time, the long form.

  1. 01

    The Salt Route

    After surviving a cyclone in coastal Bangladesh, Nusrat, an undocumented migrant in Lisbon, is haunted by visions of colonial violence across the sea.

    Feature · FictionIn development
  2. 02

    Welcome to Dhaka City

    A room-scale immersive experience that places participants inside the everyday reality of the gendered gaze, transforming a walk through the streets of Dhaka into a visceral exploration of surveillance, vulnerability, and the politics of gaze.

    VR FilmIn development
  3. 03

    Radha

    In a future where humanity has divided itself into rival religious states, a forty-five-year-old Bengali Muslim Sufi scholar living in a secluded sanctuary experiences a single night of forbidden love that mysteriously restores her fading body, sending her on a dangerous spiritual and erotic journey that forces her to choose between devotion to God and devotion to desire.

    Feature · Science FictionIn development
  4. 04

    To Feel the Wind

    After the sudden death of her husband in New York, a forty-three-year-old Bangladeshi immigrant struggles to rebuild a life for herself and her young son. As work, friendship, and an unexpected emotional connection awaken long-buried desires, she must choose between the safety of the life prescribed to her and the frightening freedom of becoming someone entirely new.

    Feature · FictionIn development
  5. 05

    Foreign Exchange

    When a Bangladeshi-American NYPD officer is killed in New York, the last dollar bill from his wallet begins an extraordinary journey across four continents, passing through the lives of migrants, workers, and exiles who unknowingly inherit fragments of his memory — revealing that every remittance carries not only money, but the unfinished story of home.

    Series · Eight PartsIn development

Hover a title to read more · More to be announced.

In the press

“I think we often underestimate the audience. If the story is strong, the audience will relate.”— Rubaiyat Hossain

“A quiet power in collective efforts.”
The New York Times
“Known for her powerful women-centric films.”
Variety
“I believe in a feminist intervention in cinema.”
Rubaiyat Hossain, Council of Europe
“An empathetic and methodical look at the act of upsetting this power structure from the ground level.”
Cinematary
“Fresh, modern, and not at all influenced by any current trend — a talented director who has assimilated the most morbid tendencies of world cinema.”
Easternkicks
“Spotlights the women driving change.”
Reuters

In her words

“Cinema does not need more gods. It needs more artists who recognize the humanity of one another.”

I would like young directors to understand that leadership does not require worship.

On power and the cult of the auteur — why the healthiest collaborations are built not on devotion but on mutual respect, and what it means to author a film without becoming a god.

Counterpoint · June 2026When Directors Become Gods→

Selected writing

Essays & Interviews

Essay

“Cinema does not need more gods. It needs more artists who recognize the humanity of one another.”

On power and the cult of the auteur — why leadership is not divinity, and what it means to author a film without becoming a god.

When Directors Become Gods

Counterpoint · 2026

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Op-Ed

“Gender is a mere performance — what we do at particular times, rather than a universal notion of who we are.”

On the death of filmmaker Rituparno Ghosh, and what his life meant to the queer community of South Asia.

Not a he, nor a she, but an individual

Dhaka Tribune · 2013

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Film Essay

“Watching Labor of Love is nothing short of meditation.”

A reading of Aditya Vikram Sengupta's wordless film — a silent, industrial portrait of a couple, told in sound and image alone.

Labor of Love is Nothing Short of Meditation

Dhaka Tribune · 2015

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Interview

“I always want to be identified as a woman. I have always picked my battle to be a woman.”

On reinterpreting Tagore, the female gaze, and the work of directing as a woman in a male-dominated industry.

On Under Construction

Dhaka Tribune · 2015

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Drag · swipe · arrows

Honours & Recognition

2023

National Film Award — Best Director

Highest state honour for filmmaking, People's Republic of Bangladesh. Only the second woman ever to receive it.

2020

Norwegian Peace Film Award

Shimu — Tromsø International Film Festival.

2019

Toronto · Torino · Amiens · APSA

Shimu travelled the world's festivals — Interfedi Award (Torino), Prix du Jury & Prix du public (Amiens), UNESCO nominee (APSA).

2017

Arte France Award — Open Doors Hub

Shimu, Locarno Film Festival.

2016

Best Emerging Director & National Honours

Under Construction — AAIFF New York, Vesoul, Dhaka IFF, and Bangladesh's National Award for Best Dialogue.

—

Mahila Parishad (Women's Council) Award

For outstanding contribution in representing women in the cinema of Bangladesh.

Beyond the Frame

A practice that extends past her own films — into producing, mentorship, scholarship, and the slow work of making room for the next generation of women behind the camera.

Khona Talkies

Founder · Producer — 2008–present

A production house built to put young Bangladeshi talent behind the camera, financed through foreign co-production and carried to global distribution. Fifteen award-winning films, including Oscar-shortlisted and internationally distributed titles.

Sultana's Dream

Founder · Course Director — 2021–present

A filmmaking mentorship and grant for women in Bangladesh — named for Begum Rokeya's 1905 feminist utopia. Screenwriting, cinematography, editing, production design, feminist film theory, and access to global financing and distribution.

Smith College

Adjunct Faculty — 2023–present

Teaching upper-level seminars in Film & Media Studies, the Study of Women, Gender & Sexuality, and South Asia Studies — at the college where her own study of women's lives began.

On the jury

IFFI · APSA · Dhaka IFF

Juror at the International Film Festival of India (Goa), the Asia Pacific Screen Awards (Brisbane), and the Dhaka International Film Festival. Board member, Women in Film & Television International.

Education

  • 2016M.A., Cinema Studies — Tisch School of the Arts, NYU
  • 2006M.A., South Asia Regional Studies — University of Pennsylvania
  • 2002B.A., Women's Studies — Smith College
  • 2002Diploma in Film Direction — New York Film Academy

Enquiries

For festivals, press, co-production, and the films still to come.

hossain.ruu@gmail.com→
IMDb