The Inner Sound

Synopsis:
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When the writer is struggling to write her next novel, she gets a phone call. The caller introduces himself as a filmmaker. He requests her permission to make a film based on a novel of hers. But she refuses.
The filmmaker keeps calling her again and again. And suddenly, one day he succeeds in arranging a meeting with her. They meet up and finally the writer gives up rejecting. But on a condition, that he has to find her a person. The filmmaker agrees.
From that day, the filmmaker starts visiting her so often in order to discuss on the story, the characters of the novel. Soon, they become very close.
The filmmaker starts managing fund for his film by approaching commercial producers. But, they offer him to remake foreign films which he refuses. He decides to sell his house back in his hometown. But he fails, due to his mother’s illness. Finally, he ends up requesting his students mother who used to be his girlfriend once. But, she too agrees on a condition that he has to make her a mother of his child.
While the filmmaker is struggling to arrange fund for his film, the writer meets some anonymous people in her house. A two years old baby girl and her mother and a twelve years old young girl. They all tell her their sob stories about the same person – the girls’ father and the woman's husband. This person was a Naxalite (* Naxalite is a member of Communist Party of India [Maoist]). He couldn’t stay at home for so long. He had to escape every time because of raid.
One night, the writer meets a young man in her house, holding a gun in his hand and talking about revolution and changing the history and all. Later on, we come to know that this is the person the young girl and the woman have been talking about.
Meanwhile, the filmmaker meets an old man at his favorite tea-stall. He finds him interesting because he talks about politics and changing the system. The old man shares his experience of life to the filmmaker how he suffered as a Naxalite, how he participated in the Liberation War of Bangladesh and how he lost his family- his wife and his daughter.
Later, police takes the filmmaker under remand asking for information about the old man. Because the old man has been missing. But realizing that he doesn’t know anything, the investigating officer lets him go.
The filmmaker meets the writer after that. She seems so worried for not seeing him around for a long time. But, when he explains how he was taken under remand, the writer bursts into tears. Because, the old man is the person she asked him to find for her. Suddenly, the filmmaker understands everything. The girls and the woman she had told him about, the young man with a gun in her house- everything starts making sense to him. The girls are actually her – the writer's childhood. The woman is actually her mother. And the young man is actually her father. And all these are actually happening in her brain, in her imagination. Even the filmmaker himself!

Director Statement
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A noted female writer had a difficult childhood, the effects of which still loom over her present. Past circumstances, including struggling parents and an underground political leader who is now missing, have made her develop psychological abnormalities. A failed filmmaker decides to reveal the truth about her life.

A flopped filmmaker wants to make his next film based on a novel by a noted female writer. The writer agrees on a condition that he has to find her a person. But the writer is suffering from psychological disorder. Suddenly, the filmmaker understands everything. The girls and the woman she had told him about, the young man with a gun in her house- everything starts making sense to him. The girls are actually her – the writer's childhood. The woman is actually her mother. And the young man is actually her father. And all these are actually happening in her brain, in her imagination. Even the filmmaker himself!

Producer's Statement:
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It is a low-budget production that approaches the European art cinema since the main character is a "failed filmmaker and a failed poet" who tries to make his new work -which looks a lot like the movie we are watching-, based on the novel of a reluctant writer. The idea of an alter ego of the film's author is reinforced by the fact that the character of the filmmaker is called almost the same (Ashraf Kabir), Gaariwala, like Shishir's previous piece. At some point we will learn that Kabir does not exist, but is, like almost all other characters, an invention of the writer's schizoid mind. Meanwhile we have: a hypocritical gentleman who manages an agency for the protection of women's rights but who himself is a sexual abuser. A bloody revolutionary act, police torture, reflections on the war of independence, political ideals defeated, melodramatic scenes of couple and even a musical number, all that sound with a hyper emotive and diversified music, with invasive presence in the mix of sound, which, for the rest, is extremely coarse, as well as photography. The assembly, however, is imaginative, complex and high impact. There's even, as part of the modernist movie.

Review:
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This is the story of a renowned writer who suffers from psychosomatic abnormalities due to the abandonment of her father - an underground political activist - when she was just a little girl, and to the sexual abuse suffered when she was a teenager. One day, during the monsoon season, an unsuccessful filmmaker pops up in her life to uncover the truth. Such is the argument used by filmmaker Ashraf Shishir to weave an intelligent and satirical cinematic meta-narrative, using the reactionary and sexist Bangladeshi social reality as backdrop. Famous Indian novelist Kaberi Raychaudhury gives life to the character of the tormented writer, while Shishir himself plays the main role, that of a filmmaker who seeks funding to produce a subversive film with which he hopes to stimulate a shift in the paradigm. The two main conflicts of the plot revolve around the revolutionary ideal. On the one hand, it reveals the incessant obstacles that an author comes across to finance an authentic and independent film in a neighboring Bollywood country, whose producers only seek economic gain by copying other people's work. On the other hand, Shishir directly raises the issue of the personal and family sacrifice that involves "making the revolution", especially in a society hostile to the female gender. Both conflicts are intertwined, mixing past and present, reality and fiction, so that the rhythm becomes faster and the film becomes a skillful suspense story.