Rubaiyat Hossain’s The Difficult Bride is stepping into the international spotlight with a new exclusive clip and an in-depth interview with Variety, ahead of its Venice premiere.
Variety unveiled the clip from the supernatural feminist drama, which is screening in the Orizzonti section of the 83rd Venice International Film Festival. The film marks the first time a feature from Bangladesh has been selected for Venice.
The story has stayed with Hossain since childhood, report Variety. She was seven when she heard about a bride who had died at a Dhaka beauty parlour while visiting the Mayfair salon with her mother. The memory remained vivid, and she says she could already see the story as a film in her mind.
Mayfair later became the setting for The Difficult Bride. The film follows Zaineen (Zaineen Chowdhury Karim), a bride-to-be whose wedding preparations turn into a disturbing struggle with her own body.
Hossain first explored the story as a short film in 2006. Nearly two decades and several drafts later, she transformed it into a feature that draws on both her academic background in gender studies and her own experience of living in a woman’s body.
“My own self and my own body became a part of the film,” Hossain told Variety. She said she wanted to communicate her embodied experience as a woman through the film. That led her towards a supernatural approach, where the irrational becomes part of the story through grotesque imagery, including lizards and snakes.
The film also examines how beauty standards are enforced. Azmeri Haque Badhon plays the salon owner who subjects Zaineen to beauty rituals, including facial injections. Hossain said the film also looks at the role women can play in maintaining patriarchal systems.
“It’s not only men; women also participate in this,” she said. “It’s a system of power.”
Set against Dhaka, the film also carries traces of the political and social tensions surrounding women’s clothing and behaviour. Rikita Nondine Shimu plays Minoti, whose character experiences surveillance and policing.
Hossain, however, does not describe the film as a direct response to the July 2024 unrest. Instead, she said she wanted to create a version of Dhaka where political violence exists outside while violence against women remains a persistent reality.
She also sees The Difficult Bride as the final part of a thematic trilogy about Bangladeshi women across different social classes. Under Construction focused on a middle-class woman, while Made in Bangladesh explored the life of a working-class woman. The new film turns its attention to Dhaka’s ultra-wealthy Gulshan-Baridhara society.
“Even in this gilded cage, even with all these privileges, you can’t be free,” Hossain said.
Zaineen Chowdhury Karim makes her acting debut as the lead. She originally worked as Hossain’s assistant director. After changes to the original cast following the disruption in July, Karim joined Zoom rehearsals and eventually took on the role.
Hossain said she saw the character in Karim from the beginning and auditioned her around 15 to 20 times.
The cast also includes Sunerah Kamal, Badhon and Shimu, all of whom are Bangladesh National Film Award winners.
Although the film is rooted in Dhaka, Hossain believes its themes reach far beyond Bangladesh. She said women from Mexico, Guatemala, Bangladesh and Vermont can face similar pressures surrounding beauty and submission.
Hossain is also working beyond her own filmmaking. She has launched a grant and mentorship programme for Bangladeshi women filmmakers. She identifies limited access to funding, restrictions on women’s mobility, the absence of a formal film school and informal male-dominated professional networks as structural barriers facing women in the industry.
The Difficult Bride is an international co-production between France’s Les Films de l’Après-Midi, Bangladesh’s Khona Talkies, Portugal’s Midas Filmes, Norway’s Barentsfilm and Germany’s Tandem Production. The project received support from the first edition of the Fondazione Prada Film Fund, while Films Boutique handles world sales.
The 88-minute film will screen in Venice’s Orizzonti section. Its press and industry screenings are scheduled for 5 September, followed by public screenings on 6 and 7 September.
After Venice, The Difficult Bride will continue its festival journey to Toronto and the BFI London Film Festival. The BFI lists the film in its 2026 programme, with Hossain credited as both director and screenwriter.
For Hossain, the film also represents a shift in filmmaking style. She says she is no longer tied to social realism and relied more heavily on her body and instincts while making the film.
“I really enjoyed the process,” she said.
She is now developing a Lisbon-set project about an undocumented Bangladeshi woman who migrates after a cyclone. She is also pursuing a television adaptation of J. Courtney Sullivan’s novel The Cliffs.
