Last Thakur

UK film-maker Sadik Ahmed directs this intense contemporary Western, which takes place in a remote town in the marshlands of Bangladesh. A mysterious young man, Kala, arrives armed with a rifle. He immediately creates a stir in the small town and especially attracts the attention of two rival leaders: the ruthless and powerful Chairman who runs the place and purports to represent his people and the one man that stands in his way: the local Thakur, one of the last Hindu landlords, who is manically re-claiming all the surrounding land for which loans remain un-paid in order to build a temple.

Walking into the middle of this bitter feud, Kala soon finds himself approached by both men to take their side. Broke and hungry, Kala begins to bargain with them, but he is here on his own mission, to find the man that raped and killed his mother and take his revenge. Some of Bangladesh's finest theatre performers offer great performances. Ahmed's training as a cinematographer is clearly evident in the bold picturisation of haunting landscapes and hollow-face-men with murder on their minds.
Cary Rajinder Sawhney