Amitabha Chaterji’s satirical film heads to Kerala Film Market at IFFK 2025

Bengali independent film Duyare Bibaho, written, shot and directed by Amitabha Chaterji, continues its festival journey after participating at the prestigious NFDC Film Bazaar during the International Film Festival of India in November 2025. The film is now set to participate at the Kerala Film Market under the International Film Festival of Kerala, scheduled to be held from December 13 to 16. A darkly comic yet deeply unsettling satire, the film imagines a city where loneliness is declared a civic problem and the government responds with a scheme that delivers marriage to citizens’ doorsteps. Two agents move through neighbourhoods persuading the lonely to wed – sometimes gently, sometimes through manipulation – turning intimacy into a bureaucratic exercise. What initially plays out as absurd humour slowly reveals a disturbing reality, where companionship is no longer a personal choice but a state-mandated arrangement, and marriage becomes mere documentation to prove one’s existence. The film features performances by Deshaa Nandii, Amrita Mukhopadhyay, Partha Sarathi Chandra, and Jagannath Chakraborty, whose restrained portrayals ground the film’s high-concept premise in lived emotion.

Known for his contemplative and socially incisive cinema, Chaterji uses quiet procedures, rehearsed politeness and everyday routines to blur the line between comedy and unease, raising an urgent question about how far governance can intrude into private lives under the guise of welfare. As the film opens to new audiences, Duyare Bibaho stands out as a timely reflection on loneliness, control and the quiet violence of systems that seek to regulate human connection.