Abu Shahed Emon

Abu Shahed Emon is a film director based in Bangladesh. He is also a scriptwriter and movie editor. He was one of the youngest film directors that his country had produced so far. He got international popularity with his first film release.  His first film 'Jalal's Story' was a Bengali film that was a sole official entry from the country for best foreign language film at the 88th Academy Awards but it did not get any nomination.

The film got critical acclaim where ever it was screened. Due to lack of funds in making the film, he got support from international market and film festivals too. His debut film was nominated for the top prize at Asia’s film festival even. Through this film, he wanted to give the viewers an identity of his country and contradicted that Bangladeshi film can be just a cut and copy paste work of Bollywood masala movies.

Currently, even Bangladeshi movies are too facing influence of Bollywood and there is hardly any meaningful cinema. he said, ‘’If a film is nominated for an award at least, the award will help as we as a filmmaker tries to establish something the world can recognize’’.

It is said that his country did not have any international standard in film education, so he traveled to other countries such as Korea, Australia, and the US for diploma courses in filmmaking and gained more exposure in the field. Abu Shahed wants to change the current concept in Bangladeshi filmmaking where films are just like Bollywood and deal with hero running behind heroines.

This is something that Abu wants to change along with his some contemporary filmmakers. Abu Shahed Emon was a student of psychology and an idea of taking up filmmaking a serious business cropped in his mind while he was doing his graduation.  Hence, he enrolled himself in diploma courses in Sydney Film School and an advanced diploma course in RMIT university and then got into a master degree from Korean National University of Arts.

He is now busy with his second project 'The Tale of a Policeman'. The film is yet to reveal this budding director’s dedication to meaningful cinema, Abu Shahed Emon is preparing himself to take the film to the international film festival.