Bangladesh has submitted films for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film since 2002. The award is handed out annually by the United States Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to a feature-length motion picture produced outside the United States that contains primarily non-English dialogue. [1] It was not created until the 1956 Academy Awards, in which a competitive Academy Award of Merit, known as the Best Foreign Language Film Award, was created for non-English speaking films, and has been given annually since. [2] Fourteen Bangladeshi films have been submitted for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, but none of them have been nominated for an Oscar.
Bangladesh, officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh, is a country in South Asia. It is the world's 8th-most populous country with a population exceeding 162,951,560 people. In area, it is the 92nd-largest country, spanning 147,570 square kilometres (56,980 sq mi). It shares land borders with India to the west and Myanmar to the east. It is also one of the most densely-populated countries in the world. Dhaka is its capital and largest city, and is also the economic, political and the cultural center of Bangladesh, followed by Chittagong, which has the country's largest port. Bangladesh forms the largest and eastern part of the Bengal region. The country's geography is dominated by the Bengal delta, the largest delta in the world. The country has many rivers and 8,046 km (5,000 mi) of inland waterways. Highlands with evergreen forests are found in the northeastern and southeastern regions of the country. The country also has the longest sea beach and the largest mangrove forest in the world. The country's biodiversity includes a vast array of plants and wildlife, including the endangered Bengal tiger, the national animal.
The United States of America (USA), commonly known as the United States or America, is a country comprising 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, and various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area and is slightly smaller than the entire continent of Europe's 3.9 million square miles. With a population of over 327 million people, the U.S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D.C., and the most populous city is New York City. Most of the country is located contiguously in North America between Canada and Mexico.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is a professional honorary organization with the stated goal of advancing the arts and sciences of motion pictures. The Academy's corporate management and general policies are overseen by a Board of Governors, which includes representatives from each of the craft branches.
In addition to the fourteen films officially submitted by Bangladesh, Pakistan submitted The Day Shall Dawn for Oscar consideration in 1959. Dawn was filmed in Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) with a mostly Bangladeshi cast speaking Urdu, the official language of West Pakistan.
Pakistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country in South Asia. It is the world’s sixth-most populous country with a population exceeding 212,742,631 people. In area, it is the 33rd-largest country, spanning 881,913 square kilometres. Pakistan has a 1,046-kilometre (650-mile) coastline along the Arabian Sea and Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by India to the east, Afghanistan to the west, Iran to the southwest, and China in the northeast. It is separated narrowly from Tajikistan by Afghanistan's Wakhan Corridor in the northwest, and also shares a maritime border with Oman.
The Day Shall Dawn is a 1959 Pakistani drama film directed by A. J. Kardar. The film was selected as the Pakistani entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 32nd Academy Awards, but was not accepted as a nominee. It was also entered into the 1st Moscow International Film Festival where it won a Golden Medal.
East Pakistan was the eastern provincial wing of Pakistan between 1955 and 1971, covering the territory of the modern country Bangladesh. Its land borders were with India and Myanmar, with a coastline on the Bay of Bengal.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has invited the film industries of various countries to submit their best film for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film since 1956. [2] The Foreign Language Film Award Committee oversees the process and reviews all the submitted films. Following this, they vote via secret ballot to determine the five nominees for the award. [1] Below is a list of the films that have been submitted by Bangladesh for review by the Academy for the award by year and the respective Academy Awards ceremony.
The secret ballot, also known as Australian ballot, is a voting method in which a voter's choices in an election or a referendum are anonymous, forestalling attempts to influence the voter by intimidation, blackmailing, and potential vote buying. The system is one means of achieving the goal of political privacy.
The Bangladeshi nominee is decided annually by the Bangladesh Federation of Film Societies. All Bangladeshi submissions were filmed in Bengali.
Bengali, also known by its endonym Bangla, is an Indo-Aryan language primarily spoken by the Bengalis in South Asia. It is the official and most widely spoken language of Bangladesh and second most widely spoken of the 22 scheduled languages of India, behind Hindi. In 2015, 160 million speakers were reported for Bangladesh, and the 2011 Indian census counted another 100 million. With approximately 260–300 million total speakers worldwide, Bengali is the 6th most spoken language by number of native speakers and 7th most spoken language by total number of speakers in the world.
All but one of the Bangladeshi submissions since 2005 have been produced by Impress Telefilm Limited film studio, based in the capital Dhaka, and there was a lot of cast crossover between the films. Actors Fazlur Rahman Babu, Jayanta Chattopadhyay and Shahidul Islam Sachchu, as well as actress Rokeya Prachi each had leading roles in three out of the six submitted films, including Britter Baire in which all four co-starred.
Impress Telefilm is a media production house in Bangladesh formed in 1996. The company produces film, drama, and drama serials, music videos, variety shows, magazine programmes, musical programmes and documentaries as well as TV commercials. Impress Telefilm was founded by Faridur Reza Sagar.
Dhaka, formerly known as Dacca, is the capital and largest city of Bangladesh. It is one of the largest and most densely populated cities in the world, with a population of 18.2 million people in the Greater Dhaka Area as of 2016, while the city itself has a population of 8.9 million inhabitants as of 2011. Dhaka is the economic, political and cultural center of Bangladesh. It is one of the major cities of South Asia, the largest city in Eastern South Asia and among the Bay of Bengal countries; and one of the largest cities among OIC countries. As part of the Bengal plain, the city is bounded by the Buriganga River, Turag River, Dhaleshwari River and Shitalakshya River. The city is located in an eponymous district and division.
Fazlur Rahman Babu is a Bangladeshi actor and singer. He won Bangladesh National Film Award for Best Supporting Actor twice for his roles in the films Shonkhonaad (2004) and Meyeti Ekhon Kothay Jabe (2016). He is also be featured in an Indian film.
Year (Ceremony) | Film title used in nomination | Original title | Director | Result |
---|---|---|---|---|
2002 (75th) | The Clay Bird [3] | মাটির ময়না (Matir Moyna) | Tareque Masud | Not Nominated |
2005 (78th) | Shyamol Chhaya [4] | শ্যামল ছায়া (Shyamol Chhaya) | Humayun Ahmed | Not Nominated |
2006 (79th) | Forever Flows [5] | নিরন্তর (Nirontor) | Abu Sayeed | Not Nominated |
2007 (80th) | On the Wings of Dreams [6] | স্বপ্নডানায় (Swopnodanay) | Golam Rabbany Biplob | Not Nominated |
2008 (81st) | Aha! [7] | আহা! (Aha) | Enamul Karim Nirjhar | Not Nominated |
2009 (82nd) | Beyond the Circle | বৃত্তের বাইরে (Britter Baire) | Golam Rabbany Biplob | Not Nominated |
2010 (83rd) | Third Person Singular Number [8] | থার্ড পারসন সিঙ্গুলার নাম্বার (Third Person Singular Number) | Mostofa Sarwar Farooki | Not Nominated [9] |
2012 (85th) | Ghetuputra Komola [10] | ঘেটুপুত্র কমলা (Ghetuputro Komola) | Humayun Ahmed | Not Nominated |
2013 (86th) | Television [11] | টেলিভিশন (Television) | Mostofa Sarwar Farooki | Not Nominated |
2014 (87th) | Glow of the Firefly [12] | জোনাকির আলো (Jonakir Alo) | Khalid Mahmood Mithu | Not Nominated |
2015 (88th) | Jalal's Story [13] | জালালের গল্প (Jalaler Golpo) | Abu Shahed Emon | Not Nominated |
2016 (89th) | The Unnamed [14] | অজ্ঞাতনামা (Oggatonama) | Tauquir Ahmed | Not Nominated |
2017 (90th) | The Cage [15] | খাঁচা (Khacha) | Akram Khan | Not Nominated |
2018 (91st) | No Bed of Roses [16] | ডুব (Doob) | Mostofa Sarwar Farooki | Not Nominated |
The cinema of Bangladesh is the Bengali-language film industry based in Dhaka, Bangladesh. It has often been a significant film industry since the early 1970s and is frequently referred to as "Dhallywood", which is a portmanteau of the words Dhaka and Hollywood. The dominant style of Bangladeshi cinema is melodramatic cinema, which developed from 1947 to 1990 and characterizes most films to this day. Cinema was introduced in Bangladesh in 1898 by the Bradford Bioscope Company, credited to have arranged the first film release in Bangladesh. Between 1913 and 1914, the first production company, Picture House, was opened. A 1928 short silent film titled Sukumari was the first Bengali-produced film in the region. The first full-length film, The Last Kiss, was released in 1931. Following the separation of Bangladesh from Pakistan, Dhaka became the center of the Bangladeshi film industry, and has generated the majority share of revenue, production and audiences for Dhallywood films. The Face and the Mask, the first Bengali-language full-length feature film of Bangladesh was produced in 1956. During the 1970s, many Dhallywood films were inspired by Indian films, with some of the films being unofficial remakes of those films. The industry continued to grow, and many successful Bangladeshi films were produced throughout the 1970s, 1980s and the first half of the 1990s.