Utshob

"No watching without your family." That was the tagline 'Utshob' took to Bangladeshi cinemas: a version of 'A Christmas Carol' that moves Dickens from Victorian London to the Mohammadpur neighbourhood of Dhaka, and from Christmas Eve to the night before Eid. It's directed by Tanim Noor, best known for thriller series like 'Kaiser', who returned to the big screen with a family comedy steeped in nineties nostalgia.

In the Shanti Neer neighbourhood everyone calls Jahangir "the miser". He isn't a bad man, but he's tight with his staff's pay, calls the police when the local kids rehearse with their band and has even locked the cat indoors for misbehaving. On the eve of Eid, as Mobarak, owner of the catering business Jahangir helps run, sings the song he sings every year, the party takes a turn.

That same night, Mobarak's spirit warns him of what's coming and then, one after another, three ghosts take him on a trip through his own life: his childhood, his youth in the nineties, his first love and the mistakes that made him who he is. Will seeing himself from the outside be enough to change him?

Zahid Hasan plays Jahangir, with Soumya Joyti as his younger self opposite Sadia Ayman. Tariq Anam Khan is Mobarak, and the three ghosts are Chanchal Chowdhury, star of 'Hawa', Jaya Ahsan and Opi Karim, who poke fun at themselves in the roles. Along the way there are nineties songs like Artcell's 'Dhushor Shomoy' and nods to video cassettes and the Bollywood hits of the time.

It opened at Eid in June 2025, reached the US, Canada and the UK on the 20th and stayed in Dhaka cinemas for more than 200 days. With the overseas markets included, it took over 130 million taka. Critics loved it, Zahid Hasan above all, and it won best film at the Meril Prothom Alo Awards.

• Comedy
• Drama
• Family