‘Moshari’: A chilling narrative on the reality of women

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On Saturday, Nuhash Humayun’s horror-short, “Moshari”, was released worldwide on Vimeo. The movie won multiple awards at the Atlanta Film Festival, Bucheon International Film Festival, Melbourne International Film Festival and Woodstock Film Festival.

It was neither the uneasy ambience of shadows and flickering lights, nor the eerie background score that struck me while watching Nuhash Humayun’s “Moshari”. Rather, the hardest blow was realising that the reason I caught onto the underlying representation from the get go was simply because I was a woman—watching the very reality of my existence through a work of horror-fiction.

“Moshari” follows the story of two sisters in a post-apocalyptic world, where bloodthirsty creatures referred to as vampires, haunt the earth after daylight disappears. To stay safe from these creatures that arrive at the slightest scent of blood, one must stay inside a moshari (mosquito net) until the sun comes up. It all seemed like a standard setup for a dystopian world until a particular detail caught my attention.

Early on in the film, there is a public announcement that even the first world countries have fallen against these monsters, but Bangladesh is still doing well against them—as most of the population is shown abiding by the regulations.