11/09/2026 - VENICE 2026: The fourth film by Rubaiyat Hossain follows a young woman grappling with the arduous rites of passage surrounding her marriage-to-be

Zaineen Karim Chowdhury (left) and Azmeri Haque in The Difficult Bride

Written and directed by Bangladeshi filmmaker Rubaiyat Hossain as her fourth feature, The Difficult Bride has become the first Bangladeshi feature to be selected at Venice (specifically in Orizzonti) and will play next at Toronto. This Dhaka-set film follows Zaineen (Zaineen Karim Chowdhury), a young woman goaded through a set of cleansing and beautification rituals before her marriage to her fiancé, Aarman (Dameer Khan). However, something darker lurks beneath, creating an atmosphere of unease in what one might call a supernatural-lite film – not unlike the tone of Marielle Heller’s Nightbitch.

Zaineen is someone whom one might describe, in crude terms, as a contemporary woman; coming from a family with money, she lingers in this uncomfortable place of privilege. She goes out of her way to find weed to smoke because it suits her habits, coercing the less economically privileged hijabi salon staff member Minoti (Rehkitz Nondine Shimu) into sourcing it for her. Likewise, she is treated to being driven around in the family car, and other luxuries act as a golden cage that she battles with escaping. Over time, she is haunted by the idea of creatures lurking beneath her skin after she is told of a former bride (Sunerah Binte Kamal) who died after discovering something crawling within her hair bun.

There remains a hilarious whiplash between Zaineen’s inner world – she prefers to sing along to the tunes of her choice, with lyrics like “physically a whore, mentally a lover girl” (that is, “LUVERGiiRL” by Bengali-Canadian artist YOANAX0X) – and the ones she is expected to inhabit. At times, she surrenders, but at others, she fights, with her body rejecting the processes along the way. One even expects the film to burst into the realm of body horror as a result, but Hossain remains grounded in psychological drama.

With ornate production design by Jonaki Bhattacharya, the feel of extravagance-cum-commercialism is all around, but creepy-crawlies and lizards transmogrify overly pristine spaces into ones that remind Zaineen of what she fears. They start to act more as manifestations of her insecurity and rejection of heteronormative sociocultural norms than anything else. For example, eerily large snails appear as a motif: curiously, an almost identical motif exists in the Karlovy Vary champion Fruit Gathering.

Although Hossain flirts with a variety of juicy themes – including bodily expectations for women, rigidly enforced social norms, misogyny and elements of social stratification – the movie’s tempting premise never explodes into its full potential. The feature’s origination as a short film feels omnipresent, with tendrils of unexplored pathways that float off from the main storyline. A jarring encounter with a police officer scratches the surface of this latent hostility that yearns to be pressed further, where Zaineen seems to be internally clawing at the binds that hold her. This tug of war, however, regretfully never reaches a fever pitch before its more decisive concluding moments.

The Difficult Bride is a co-production by France’s Les Films de l’Après-Midi, Portugal’s Midas Filmes, Bangladesh’s Khona Talkies and the director herself, Norway’s Barentsfilm and Germany’s Tandem Production. Films Boutique holds the rights to its world sales.