Tina Kakadelis
We use the word “voice” both in the literal sense and when we talk about a point of view or a direction. For filmmaker Adnan Al Rajeev and his short film, Ali, voice is power. To be able to harness your desires and act upon them is one of the bravest, hardest acts a person can endure. Ahead of Ali’s North American premiere at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival, Al Rajeev sat down with Film Obsessive News Editor Tina Kakadelis to discuss bringing a Bangladeshi voice to one of the biggest film stages, the delicate creation of prosthetics, and what it means to be silenced.
Ali is part of the Short Cuts Programme 04 and tells the story of a teenager, Ali (Al Amin), who lives in a coastal town where women are not allowed to sing. Wanting to get away from this small town, Ali signs up for a singing competition that, should he win, would take him to the big city. However, he’s hiding his true voice in a stifling, sinister manner.
The idea for Ali came from an interest in the larger idea of a voice. More than merely vocal vibrations, the sounds coming out of a person’s mouth or through their art are a pillar of their identity. That concept intrigued Al Rajeev and he began writing the script.
“It’s a metaphor of existence, identity, and also recognition,” states Al Rajeev. “Voice as identity, visibility, and resistance.”
Music plays an important role in the film, with Ali’s passion manifesting in his voice. There’s a rawness to Ali’s singing when he’s finally able to do it. When he no longer feels he has to hide anything. The idea of having music play a large role in the film comes from Al Rajeev’s knowledge of Lalon Shah, a prominent folk singer who has written hundreds of songs. Many of them focus on life, death, and everything in between.
“There’s a mystique about him and his music,” describes Al Rajeev. “It’s all mysterious and how we are born as humans. What are our troubles while we run through our lives? While writing, I felt we needed a song that talks about this subject and what I want to say in Ali.”
“I kept on looking. We thought of creating something new at the beginning. Then I thought, no, there are still songs that talk about this very strongly,” continues Al Rajeev. “I love Lalon and that’s when I said, okay, let’s bring those songs in. Eventually, we found the right one where he’s speaking to God. Most of his songs are spiritual. This song is talking about a guy who is in between the dilemma of being himself and hiding himself. There are two selves. The lyrics were absolutely on point and we thought, okay, this is the song it needs to be.”
On Ali’s neck is a second mouth. For most of the film, it’s hidden under a scarf loosely wrapped around his neck. Fairly early on in the film, we see an extreme close-up of a mouth being sewn shut. What the audience doesn’t realize at first is whose mouth this is and that it’s located in a place we don’t expect it to be. It’s a heartbreaking, powerful image to see the needle go in and out, sealing a pair of lips shut. For Al Rajeev, the behind-the-scenes of this component of this film proved to be one of the most difficult aspects of the shoot.
“In Bangladesh, we are still in the early ages of prosthetic work because we don’t have a film industry as of yet. We just run on advertising,” explains Al Rajeev. “It took a month to actually design whatever we needed to do. We needed to use silicone, but how and what kind of silicone does it need to actually look so real?”
“Bangladesh did not have the right silicone to make the right texture for the skin,” Al Rajeev goes on. “We thought we might not be able to shoot the mouth because it looked so fake. It was only five days before the shoot that I got to see the final one. My DP (Kamrul Hasan Khosru), my producers (Tanveer Hossain & Kristine de Leon), we all went and checked in and we were so disappointed with the lips. We thought we wouldn’t be able to make this film because this characteristic of Ali is so prominent and if it’s not working, we shouldn’t do it.
“Thankfully, after that, the prosthetic artist said, no, let me just try one more time. We researched on the internet, on YouTube, everywhere. Finally, on the shoot day at 4:00 in the morning, we actually found the right size and right texture for the lips. We could only make two lips, so we had to figure out how to use them enough to make an impact, but also keep them looking good.”
Our conversation has been about sounds, music, and voice, but much of Ali is quite quiet. This was a purposeful choice by Al Rajeev, one that came from the desire to make Ali feel “suppressed through visual, audio, the two characters and their motions.”
“You should feel like it’s a suppression. That it’s like a quiet space where you cannot speak up. Sound design was always on my mind,” Al Rajeev states. “I need to do something that would make people think, okay, it’s a quiet space, so the audience can also feel it. That they would not look around and talk. That’s how films work, right? Once you see something visual, that’s how you react.”
“I thought of making something where the audio design is done in a way in which we can feel that this is a place where you cannot talk,” Al Rajeev goes on. “You have to speak very smoothly and slowly in a whisper.”
Prior to Ali, Al Rajeev primarily worked in advertising and television. Not only is Ali his first narrative short film, but it’s also the first Bangladeshi film to be honored at the Cannes Film Festival. In a short amount of time, Ali’s voice will be heard at another of the mainstream film world’s biggest festivals. Al Rajeev is grateful for his experience in advertising because it let him play around in different genres and unknowingly shaped his voice as a narrative filmmaker.
“Advertising has always given me the space where I can do stylization and do some in an arthouse look or maybe do some drama. Everything was very hands-on for me,” Al Rajeev recounts. “After so many years of working in advertising, I thought, okay, I should just probably get my hands on films and see how I can actually deal with characters, deal with real emotions, and long formats. I want to grow my own horizon and see whether I can work in the international market as well. The story of Ali hit me so hard and gave me the chance to do something I haven’t done before, like shoot in a three-by-two box and do a very different kind of edit. Somehow it worked.”
It certainly worked or Al Rajeev wouldn’t be on his way to Toronto soon with a short but mighty film about working toward a better future.
“Not even in my dreams have I ever thought of going to TIFF or Cannes and getting an award for the special mention. I love Sundance, I love Tiff, I love Cannes,” smiles Al Rajeev. “These are the festivals I’ve been watching with the movies I love. I’ve always wanted to make a film for those festivals. This is something where I feel like, okay, I can probably dream of making a feature film which will hopefully play here, too.”
