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Communicating with your audience is surely what every filmmaker sets out to do. But few choose to do so in a dialect specific to just a small corner of the world.
Husband and wife team Tareque and Catherine Masud set themselves that very challenge with their latest film Ontorjatra (Inner Journey) which was screened at the Dubai International Film Festival (DIFF) last week.
I caught up with Catherine and lead actress Sara Zaker to find out more about the film in which a divorced mother and her son return to Bangladesh after 15 years in London following the death of her ex-husband.
Masud, an American who has lived in Bangladesh for 10 years, said: "This is a film that touches on dislocation and identity and searching for our roots.
"It's a universal experience in our globalised world of having multiple identities culturally and linguistically."
Told in Bengali, English and Sylheti, Masud explained she wanted to use the dialect from the north-eastern division of Bangladesh because 80 to 90 per cent of Bangladeshi migrants to the UK were from Sylhet.
"We thought it would be more authentic if they came from Sylhet," she said.
"We were very happy when we released it in Bangladesh that it seemed to reach out to a younger audience and I think they identified very strongly with these characters even though it's not a song and dance film or a love story."
The film, to be screened on Britain's Channel 4 this week, uses a mix of professional and non-professional actors.
Long-time actress Zaker, who plays the mother, is a Bengali speaker and had to learn Sylheti from scratch for the part.
"It was almost like learning French," said the 52-year-old.
Daily training
"It took three to four months of daily training, with every word repeated over and over again to get that accent right.
"You almost forget every other aspect of yourself because you sink into the Sylheti dialect and then everything else just happens."
Lead actor Rifaqat Rasheed, who plays her son, had never acted before. However, the fact that he had grown up in London and come back to Bangladesh, and that his parents were divorced, gave him the right experiences to empathise with his character.
Masud, 43, said of the casting: "We were looking for somebody who could particularly relate on a personal level."
Another non-professional actor in the film, cast in the role of the grandfather, was a retired ambassador in real life.
"His take on the film was it was nothing new to act because, as an ambassador he had been acting his entire life," said Masud.
The 86-minute movie is the fourth by the Masuds, who won the International Critics' Prize at Cannes for their 2002 film Matir Moina (The Clay Bird).
Did you know?
Ontorjatra (Inner Journey) was the first digitally-shot film in Bangladesh which was later transferred to 35mm film.
Co-director Catherine Masud said they had used the technique because there were no facilities to work with 35mm film in Bangladesh.
She said: "We wanted to introduce this technique to Bangladesh's filmmaking scene and we are quite satisfied with the results. It gave us a lot of freedom."
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