Made in Bangladesh

Made in Bangladesh (2019) is a Bengali film co-written and directed by Rubaiyat Hossain.

This movie is an homage to Made in Dagenham (2010). Rikita Nandini Shimu portrays Shimu Akhtar, which was the Sally Hawkins role in the English film. However badly the workers were treated in Dagenham, the workers in Bangladesh are treated worse.

For example, they are forced to work into the night to complete an order, and then told they have to stay at the plant and sleep on the floor. The final blow is that management turns off the large electric fan that makes the heat bearable.

The best option open to the women is to form a union, but that turns out to be extraordinarily difficult. Everyone is against them--some of their colleagues, their husbands, management of course, and, as we learn, the ministry of labor.

How the women react to this mountain of opposition is the plot of the movie.

Rikita Nandini Shimu is a skilled professional actor. She inhabits the role and makes it her own. It was a pleasure to watch her act.

The film is based on a real-life labor organizer, who helped in making the film. What we see is drama, not documentary, but it's based on reality.

This movie worked well enough on the small screen. We watched it at Rochester's Dryden Theatre as part of the outstanding Rochester Labor Film Series.

Made in Bangladesh has a respectable IMDb rating of 7.1. I thought it was much better than that, and rated it 9.