Faces from an album of Muktijuddha

Her name could have been Jahanara, Sufia, Zakia, Anjum, Kulsum... In 'Guerrilla', she is Bilkis. On March 7, 1971, like millions of others, she too had heard Sheikh Mujibar Rahman thunder - "Ebarer Sangram Muktir Sangram, Ebarer Sangram Swadhinatar Sangram". But the full import of the words did not sink in till March 25, when her journalist husband Hasan never returned from work.With Operation Searchlight, the Pak army had unleashed not only machine guns, bullets, mortars, tanks and cannon fires but also rape, molestation, physical atrocities, indiscriminate killings and genocide. Bilkis, till then a bank employee, transformed into a guerrilla with only one credo: "This struggle is for our freedom, this struggle is for our independence."
The storyline is slim, the characters are not fleshed out. This hardly matters. What does is that Bilkis is not a fictitious character. She springs from the pages of an album that has the word 'History' etched on it. Forty years after hoardes of women gave their all to ward off the menacing barrels of soldiers who were sent to tame their countrymen, when the children born of the heinous violence too are unaware of their past, 'Guerrilla' portrays the exemplary and valorous participation of fighters who dressed in burqas and saris. Indeed, the film that had an unchequered run at the BO in Dhaka highlights that irrespective of caste, creed, class, age or gender, people picked up arms to script the unprecedented Muktijuddha.
They were a different generation, who were motivated by the belief that freedom is not a gift, it is every human's birthright. Director Nasiruddin Yousuf Bacchu draws upon his own memories and experiences as a freedom fighter to build upon renowned Bangla writer Shamsul Haque's Nishiddha Loban. So, little children sing patriotic songs or shout 'Joy Bangla' oblivious of the occupation forces at the door. A mother disregards danger to hide a tape in her infant's perambulator. The housekeeper exhorts Binni, the maid, not to give away that the milkman was called Naren. The Bahe woman on the train pleads in vain for intervention when she is dragged away to a military camp, despite a valid ticket. And when Hasan's mother holds her daughter-in-law responsible for her son's demise, she only makes Jaya Ahsan's Bilkis more believable.
Samiran Dutta's camera helps the film in becoming more than a docu-drama, an artistic rendition of the Liberation War etched in blood and tears. It's heartening that the saga will be viewed in three citadels of Indian cinema. After its screening in the ongoing KFF, it will be seen in the upcoming 42nd IFFI starting in Goa on November 23, and in December it will be in the 16th International Film Festival of Kerala. And then, before returning to Dhaka, it will flag off a festival of films revolving around the birth of Bangladesh.
That festival, Liberation War of Bangladesh on Celluloid, will feature six films: Matir Moina, Joy Jatra, Guerrilla, Amar Bandhu Rashed, Khelaghar and Khando Galpo 1971. Its dates with Nandan - December 9 to 11 - mark the 40th anniversary of the war, and subsequently it will travel to Agartala in February and Delhi in March.