Fatima Shaik searches for a critical piece of family history in The Bengali
THE BENGALI (Kavery Kaul, 2021)
Quad Cinema
34 West 13th St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Opens Friday, September 9
212-255-2243
quadcinema.com
www.thebengalifilm.com
“Why would anybody come from the other side of the world to find somebody who doesn’t even exist anymore?” author Fatima Shaik says at the beginning of The Bengali. “Why not?” asks Kolkata-born American director Kavery Kaul. Armed with a partial ship’s registry and a photograph of her grandfather, Shaik Mohamed Musa, who left his small village in India in 1893 to make a new life in the United States, in New Orleans, where he married a Black woman, Fatima travels to her ancestral country, wanting to know more about where she came from and to see a patch of land that he owned. Joined by Kaul, who is Bengali, and cinematographer John Russell Foster, who is white, they have very little information and face roadblock after roadblock until success is in reach, but everywhere she goes, Fatima is met with resistance, as Indians view her with suspicion, thinking that she, a Christian in a Muslim community, might be there to reclaim her grandfather’s land.
The Bengali is an emotional, deeply personal search for identity, almost to the point of obsession, of seeking out one’s family history in a land where you don’t speak the language and are not immediately welcome. The film opens at the Quad on September 9, with Kaul (Cuban Canvas, Long Way from Home) participating in Q&As following the 7:00 screenings on September 9 and 10 and after the 5:10 show on September 11.