Masud Pathik, PhD

Cinema

He calls his way of filmmaking raw realism: poetic cinema shot on real land, with real water, among the people who live there.

Films

Each of his films began as a poem: his own, or one by a poet he loves.

2014

Nekabborer Mohaproyan

The Great Departure of Nekabbor. 2014.

Made from Nirmalendu Goon’s poem of the same name. Written and directed by Masud Pathik, who also wrote the lyrics. Produced by Bratya Films (now Bratya Creation).

National Film Award for Best Film and Best Lyricist (“Nishipakkhi”), honoured in six categories in all. Best Director at the International Independent Film Festival, UK, 2016.

2019

Maya: The Lost Mother

2019, 110 minutes. Research, story, dialogue, screenplay, direction and production by Masud Pathik, for Bratya Creation, with a government grant.

Built from true stories of the Birangana women and the war children of 1971, after Shahabuddin Ahmed’s painting “Women” and Kamal Chowdhury’s poem “War Child”.

A record ten National Film Awards in eight categories, including Best Story. Screened at about fifteen festivals, among them Dhaka, Nashik and Delhi, the SAARC Film Festival, the Toronto Multicultural Film Festival and the World Film Festival Kolkata. Best Narrative Feature at the Tagore International Film Festival and Best Narrative Film at the Indo Asian Film Festival.

Poster for Soul of Nature: BOK, a dark silhouette of a woman made of white cranes, roots growing from her feet

Soul of Nature: BOK

2026, 87 minutes, 4K. Bengali with English subtitles. On the festival circuit.

A poetic feature drawn from Jibanananda Das’s poem “Eight Years Ago One Day”, about nature, ecofeminism, folk philosophy and the bond between the human unconscious and the living world. Its language is poetic cinema, eco-metaphoric realism and raw realism.

With Ratan Dev, Runa Khan, Saffwan Mahmud, Rejoan Rohan, Grihi Roy, Abraham Tamim, Elina Shammi, Asha Majid Roji and Anto Azad. Cinematography by Samar Dhali, sound by Shoibo Talukder, music by Shamim Mahmud and Masud Pathik, colour by Chinmoy Roy, edited by Jak Jakir. Story, screenplay and direction by Masud Pathik; co-writer Areeb Anusurzzo. Produced by Bratya Creation, co-sponsored by GRRIPP, London.

Reviews

Reviews and critical writing on the films will be collected here.

Next films

Two features are moving toward the camera.

Poster for Man Is Just a Concept: an old farmer whose body breaks into newspaper scraps, beside a red bullock, on cracked earth

Man Is Just a Concept

Feature, about 75 minutes, without dialogue. Shooting from December 2026.

An orphan named Tamim has no one but his red bullock. A wordless, magic-realist film about hunger, kindness and the people a village forgets, told on a single stretch of land across past and present.

Poster for Hijal: A Character Without a Shadow, a felled tree seen from above with its rings, a bullet and a single grain of rice

Hijal: A Character Without a Shadow

Feature screenplay, 44 scenes, about 93 minutes. In development.

A gold-medal seed scientist loses his job, his wife and his son, and goes home to sow a nearly extinct rice. It yields eight maunds a bigha against the hybrid’s thirty. A hundred-year-old tree is sold for the price of a mother’s surgery, and the man who would not let it go stops speaking.

More screenplays

Twenty-eight feature screenplays in development, including the two above. The August received a government grant and is paused for now. Scripts and treatments are available to producers, labs and funds on request.

Poster for Drop: a blind young woman resting her head against a tree as water drips into a bowl

Drop

Feature screenplay, about 100 minutes. In development.

A blind girl, a piece of land and the weight of a signature. Set in a Dhaka boarding house, a sculpture studio and a mango orchard.