Bangla: love outside of your confort zone

While the coronavirus wreaks havoc throughout the world, Italy has been amongst the hardest hit. With the country now though gradually reopening, London's Made in Italy film festival, held at the French Institute's Cine Lumière, is a welcome reminder of what Italy does best, producing some of the world's most glittering cinema.

This year's selection is stellar and features both first-time features, alongside the work of cinematic masters. One film though stands out and it is the delightful Bangla, directed and starring the irrepressible Phaim Bhuiyan. Bangla presents a refreshing and unique perspective of race and race relations in the Italy today.

Bangla’s central character is a portrait of Phaim himself, a young man torn between his conservative Muslim Bangladeshi parents and the joie de vie sensibility of Italy itself. This all comes to a head when Phaim meets and falls in love with a beautiful and very understanding Italian young woman.

For the first time in his life he is forced to decide who he really is. Between his multiple jobs, part time membership in an indie band and regular attendance at his local mosque (whose own cleric, to Phaim's surprise finds himself in pretty much the same situation).

Phiam has carefully avoided asking himself any difficult questions and for the most part has been content to draft between the two worlds. But now faced with either the possible disapproval of his parents if they find out about his relationship or losing his girlfriend altogether, Phaim is desperate for answers.

Bangla is a gentle exploration of what it means to be both Muslim and Italian living in the country today and ask whether it is possible to reconcile both worlds? It would be churlish to give away the ending of Bangla, but the film shines a welcome light on another side of Italy's immigration question, away from the problems of those who have recently arrived, onto the second generation who were born there. The film looks at this generation to see how easy it is to find a middle ground.