Sand City
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Polish premiereTheatrical Screenings
Kinoteka 2
Kinomuzeum
Online Availability
Additional Materials
Film description
Here are two seemingly distant life stories. In the heart of Dhaka lives Emma, a woman from an Aboriginal ethnic minority who steals sand from public spaces every day for her cat, and Hasan, a factory worker who smuggles sand out of his workplace, dreaming of one day opening his own workshop and making glass. When Emma finds a human finger among the grains of quartz and Hasan is caught red-handed, their worlds begin to intertwine.
In the history of cinema, sand has always played a special role - as a poetic carrier of meanings and metaphors. In “Sand City”, it becomes the building material of the Bangladeshi metropolis, Dhaka, seeping deep into the very fabric of the place and its everyday life. Sand here is not merely a backdrop, but the very core of existence in a city rising on unstable foundations. Overwhelming in its concrete density, Dhaka appears as a monumental sandcastle, fragile, wavering, full of contradictions, yet a magnificent setting for an urban symphony of striking visual form. Inspired by European film modernism, “Sand City” portrays the multicultural Dhaka and the tensions surrounding its identity, captured within a poetic frame.
text:
Łukasz Mańkowski
Mahde Hasan
A director from Bangladesh. His short films “I Am Time” and “Death of a Reader” were presented at the 69th and 71st editions of the Locarno Film Festival. Where is the Friend's Home won first place in the “movieofmylife” digital competition at the 70th edition of the festival. In 2018, he participated in the Open Doors Hub program in Locarno and received a grant for the development of his feature debut, “City of Sand.” The completed film premiered at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival in 2025.
2013 I am Time (short)
2018 Death of a Reader (short)
2020 A Boring Film (short)
2025 Miasto z piasku / Sand City
Festival guests
Mahde Hasan
