Under Construction is about a middle class Muslim woman struggling to find herself in the sprawl of urban Bangladesh. Theatre actress Roya suffers from her husband’s wish for children and traditional life. Not interested in motherhood, she decides to reconstruct a famous and politically minded play for modern times, reclaiming her identity, her freedom and her sexuality in the process.

Roya, a modern middle-class Muslim woman struggles to find herself in the sprawl of urban Bangladesh. After being replaced by a younger actor for the character of ‘Nandini’—the epitome of Bengali womanhood, the central character of Rabindranath Tagore’s political play ‘Red Oleanders;’ she delves into a psychological journey and battles to reconstruct ‘Nandini,’ reclaiming her identity and sexuality in the process. As she sets the play in a modern day ready-made garment factories in Dhaka; her journey to establish her individuality as a middle class woman is juxtaposed with the journey of her teenage housemaid Moyna, who later joins the industrial workforce.

Rubaiyat Hossain

Rubaiyat Hossain is one of Bangladesh’s handful of female filmmakers, known for her debut feature film Meherjaan (2011) which faced political and cultural wrath in Bangladesh for its anti-war narrative, and its critic of masculine nationalism from a feminine point of view. Her second feature Under Construction premiered at New Directors Showcase at Seattle International Film festival and was theatrically released and well received in Bangladesh in 2016. Hossain uses a feminist lens to deconstruct the otherwise phallocentric institution of cinema. Currently she lives between Dhaka and New York making films and attending Tisch School of Arts at New York University in Cinema Studies.