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Cultural Correspondent
Nargis Akter, of Meghla Akash fame, is preparing to make a movie on the plights of immigrants as well as their love affairs and marital bonds with the natives. The film will also show a triangular love affair. The idea of making a feature film on the life of immigrants came to Nargis when she went to Germany to take part in a programme. �I think people should know about the life of the immigrants � what they do, how they manage to get jobs, etc.� She had studied some cases in Germany. She further said, �When I mentioned my plan of a new movie on this issue in a party in Germany, a young German girl broke into tears before us. She then told us of her sad experience of being married to a Bangladeshi man.�
 �I hope this film will touch the heart of the viewers both at home and abroad,� she added.
 Recently, Nargis was selected as one of 500 Talents World Wide in the first Barlinale talent campus, organised by the House of World Culture Centre in Berlin. She participated in that weeklong programme, which began on February 9 this year. Some sequences of a telefilm Patalpurir Golpo (Water Blues), directed by Nargis Akter, was screened in the Campus. The movie, which dealt with arsenic contamination in the tube-wells and its consequences, attracted the participants of the programme. �They opined that they had enjoyed very much the colourful scenes of Bangladesh. Though the acting style of the Bangladeshi cast was different, the heroine of the film looked very pretty,� said Nargis.
 Among two thousand participants, including film directors, writers, cinematographers, producers, music directors, actors and actresses from seventy countries, Nargis Akter from Bangladesh and Mira Nayer from India represented South Asia. Besides participating in the Campus, Nargis also visited the Rotary Clubs in Berlin as a goodwill ambassador of the Dhaka Mid-Town Rotary Club.
 A German citizen of Bangladeshi descent is working as a producer of the film. Nargis, who will work as the director of the film, informed this correspondent that they had almost completed the script and had also decided on the title of the film � I Miss You. The movie will be made in two languages � Bangla and English. She also informed this correspondent that she would follow the conventional Western style of movie making in the English version. It will also have German subtitles. Its duration will be about 2 hours. The Bangla version will be made as a commercial film without any subtitle.
 Nargis also plans to cast Ute Maria, a German actress based in Cologne, to play the female lead role. She also plans to cast Ferdous for the role of protagonist. The director said, �I talked to them and they agreed happily.� But the cast for the other roles has yet to be decided.
 In the story of the film, the hero goes to Europe illegally. After a hard struggle on the snow-covered border in Germany, he enters the country. There he marries a German girl, Maria, to get legal status. But in Bangladesh he had a love affair with Kushum, who was waiting for him. When he gets the citizenship papers in Germany, he wants to leave Maria and go back to Kushum, get married and live together in Germany. At last, the hero changes his mind and goes back to Maria.
 �The message of the movie will be that no women should be exploited and the illegal immigrants should be committed to their lovers or spouses. �The co-heroine, Kushum, who lives in Bangladesh, is a victim of tragedy,� said Nargis.
 �We have a wrong conception of the immigrants from the Third World � that they marry the local women just to get citizenship. When they get citizenship they divorce the girls and get married again in their countries of origin to girls of their own race,� Nargis continued. �I want to show that all of the expatriates, mainly the Bangladeshi ones, are not frauds or opportunists � they respect the natives, and they have honest mentalities.� The director hopes to shoot the charming scenery of the famous Tulip Garden in Holland. The shooting of the Bangladesh part will hopefully start at the end of this year.
 The House of World Cultural Centre hopes to arrange this sort of congregation every year. The participants of this year can also take part in the programme. Nargis said that the other talents came both from the developed and the underdeveloped countries, and there was no major difference between the standard of the works of the participants.
 Nargis�s recently made Meghla Akash, a full-length feature film on women trafficking and the HIV/AIDS issues, made her reputation in the international arena. The movie was screened in the weeklong international women�s film festival named Feminale in Cologne in Germany on October 4 and 5 last year. The jury board selected 28 movies out of 600 from 44 participant countries. Nargis�s was the only South Asian film in the festival. Meghla Akash has also been selected for two other international film festivals in Munich and Nuremberg this month and the next.
 Nargis also directed a tele-drama titled Valentine�s Golap Phool; a 6-episode tele-drama on women�s reproductive health and right; a documentary film on health awareness through folk culture; a training video titled Living with Flood; a 6-episode package drama on the community-based fisheries management programme titled Ban Bhasi Manusher Jibon; a docu-drama on post-flood rehabilitation and construction titled We Want a New Life. She also worked as a production coordinator for an international documentary film on women in Asia titled A Voice of Her Own. She has also directed a motivational film on HIV/AIDS titled Ajana Ghatak.
 Nargis Akter completed her Masters in Social Welfare in the University of Dhaka. She is the founder and the director of FemCom, a women�s professional media group in city. She also works in scripting, camera direction, editing and is involved in social activities. Nargis started her career as a development worker in the mid-eighties and later concentrated on the visual media. She received the Critics� Award for the best director from the Cultural Reporters Association and the Annana Top Ten Women for documentary film last year. She also received the Samaloy award for the tele-film Patalpurir Golpo from Kolkata and the Best Film Maker Award from the Desh Prem Shangskriti Forum last year.