This was the second of my forays into the ‘Classic Features’ now available online from the London Indian Film Festival and it proved a very rewarding experience. The film’s title Runway refers directly to the home of the film’s central family who live beneath the flight path of aircraft landing at Dhaka’s international airport. The airport is so close that some of the lights indicating the landing path are situated close to the family’s shack. There are also vaguely metaphorical/symbolic readings associated with the title. At one point a small boy aims his catapult at an aircraft that roars over him as it lands. The father of the family is away trying to earn money in Kuwait and for his son Ruhul, who is effectively the ‘man of the family’, life is refusing to ‘take off’. He can’t find a job and he and his sick grandfather are the men at home supported by the earnings of Ruhul’s sister Fatema who works in a clothing sweatshop and his mother Rahima who keeps a cow, bought with a loan from an NGO. The shack’s location is also close to the local river system and Ruhul watches the fishermen with the static Chinese nets.
Runway was made by the husband and wife team of Tareque (director) and Catherine (producer) Masud, whose previous international success was The Clay Bird (2002). Tareque was killed in a car accident in 2011. Catherine is now the curator of the couple’s back catalogue of features, documentaries and shorts. The Masuds’ work seems largely self-financed or ‘independently’ produced and low budget and in a way this film is a reminder of aspects of the similar Indian independent films of the 1970s/80s, except that it doesn’t use the kinds of avant-garde techniques of New Cinema or feature the professional acting and literary/theatrical riches of much of Parallel Cinema in India. The main cast of this feature appear to have been non-professionals at the time apart from the actor who plays the grandfather. Some smaller roles are taken by professionals. Fatema’s friend Sheuli who lives close by is played by Rikita Nandini Shimu who went on to become the lead in Made in Bangladesh (2019), which was very impressive at the London Film Festival last year. The whole cast are very good and the technical standards of the film are high despite what seem to be budget difficulties.
Along with the performances, I was most impressed by the script which manages to to interweave the stories of all of the characters to demonstrate the complexities of life in a country like Bangladesh. Everyone faces financial and moral dilemmas and their actions have an impact on each other. The film never ‘preaches’ but it shows us these lives in such a way that we recognise the problems but also see that there is respite in the love for one another and the beauties of the natural world. It’s a life-affirming film even when it presents us with jihadism and its consequences. Although the events are linked to actual events in Bangladesh earlier in the 2000s, all the characters are fictitious.
Ruhul’s uncle runs a small internet/telephone parlour which Ruhul visits to search for job opportunities. Over a few days he becomes friendly with Arif, a university dropout who appears confident and well-groomed. Ruhul is being recruited into a jihadist group. He is aware of what is happening and of course the group leader promises him that he can get a job at the airport. Will Ruhul become a martyr? His dilemmas are several. He feels that he is living off his mother’s and sister’s earnings. He must get a job, but becoming a jihadist will alienate them and ‘fail’ them. He knows they love him. Sheuli is the girl he loves but he feels he can’t marry her and be supported by her work. Will his father return from Kuwait where industrial disputes threaten the job market for migrant workers? Rahima misses her husband so much that she begins to fantasise that he has returned. It all sounds desperate but Ruhul has the capacity to stay calm. Can he pull through?
Runway is available to watch free online (via registration) until 19th August and is well worth a look.
The Case for Global Film 