Tareque Masud

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Tareque Masud (Bangla: তারেক মাসুদ) is an independent film director from Bangladesh. Masud mentions in his website and on many interviews about his childhood experience while studying in a madrasa. The Liberation War fought against Pakistan disrupted his life as it did the lives of countless others. After the war, he pursued a general education and completed his postgraduate Masters degree from Dhaka University on History. His first acclaimed film was a documentary entitled Adam Surat (Inner Strength) on the Bangladeshi painter SM Sultan which he completed in 1989. His most famous film in early age of his carrer was a dcumentary entitled Muktir Gaan (The Song of Freedom, 1995) where camera follows a music troup in the time of Liberation War of Bangladesh in 1971. The members of the troup sing songs for freedom fighters to inspire them. The film was made mainly based on the footage of American filmmaker Liar Levin which he got at the basement of Levin's house in New York. Along with his wife, Catherine Masud who is also the co-director of Masud and a prominent film editor, he runs a film production house based in Dhaka named Audiovision. His first full-length feature film, Matir Moina (English release title "The Clay Bird") which debuted at the Cannes Film Festival, derives inspiration from his own childhood experiences. He won the International Critic's Award in the Cannes film festival in 2002 for this film. Matir Moina was received with critical praise and toured the international circuit. It was one of the first Bangladeshi films to be widely circulated and was greeted with enthusiasm for its realistic depiction of life without the melodrama that is prevalent in many other South Asian films. His latest film Ontorjatra is a tale of two generations of Bangladeshi diaspora in London. The film describes the short visit of a divorced mother and her son to home. The next project of Tareque and Catherine Masud is Kagojer Phool (The Paper Flower) which deals with the incidents of the partition of Indian sub-continent and the film may be called the prequel of Matir Moina.