“I wanted to explore urban fragility and human connection,” director Mahde Hasan told us, as Sand City was presented at the 33rd EnergaCAMERIMAGE.
A confident young man, Bangladeshi writer-director Mahde Hasan is also a very down to earth man, making time out his busy schedule (travelling in between film festivals — Warsaw, Toruń, Cairo — to meet and talk more about his directorial debut which premiered at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in the Proxima Competition, winning the prestigious Proxima Grand Prix 2025. Here at theEnergaCAMERIMAGE in Toruń, Poland, his film Sand City is part of the debut directors competition and already causing a stir among the audiences for the film show went house full.
This film offers a poetic, reflective examination of urban life in Dhaka, Bangladesh, one of the world’s most densely populated cities, intertwined with the lives of two strangers connected by the fragile element of sand and their shared, silent struggles.
For Mahde Hasan, sand was not just a thematic choice but a metaphor for the instability and fragility present both in the city and its inhabitants. “Sand has a dichotomy,” Hasan explains. “You can build structures with sand, but it is unstable and fragile. Through sand, I wanted to show the precariousness of Dhaka and the lives of those living within it.” His narrative centers on two protagonists, a woman from an ethnic minority and a man from the majority community, each grappling with their existence in a chaotic urban environment where survival often demands quiet endurance.
His inspiration came from very personal and observational experiences. Living on the city’s outskirts with his partner, he witnessed her collecting sand for cat litter and facing societal challenges as a woman. These moments sparked the creation of the female lead’s character. Meanwhile, the male lead draws from a friend with nonconformist ideals and ambitions to rise above his factory job by crafting glass from stolen sand. The setting itself, the ever-expanding, sand-built cityscape of Dhaka, reflects this tension: a glittering metropolis built on unstable ground. “Dhaka resembles a collage of shattered glass,” Hasan observes, a fractured mirror of fragmented lives.
Cinematographer Mathieu Giombini’s work complements Hasan’s vision with grainy, textured visuals bathed in muted palettes that evoke the city’s dust and decay. The film avoids traditional narrative intersections, instead opting to present the parallel stories of its protagonists, emphasizing their solitary journeys amid the vast anonymity of urban life.
One of the film’s striking motifs is a severed finger discovered by the female lead, which subtly symbolizes the human cost and cruelty often left unseen beneath the city’s surface. Rather than shock, it evokes empathy and reflection on loneliness, societal violence, and the absence of connection. Both protagonists embody different forms of alienation: the woman faces racial hostility and social isolation, while the man confronts job loss and escapes through fleeting distractions. Their intertwined yet separate narratives mirror the fractured social fabric of the city itself.
Mahde’s journey into filmmaking was unconventional. With a background in anthropology and no formal film school training, he learned by doing, driven by a desire to tell stories beyond stereotypes and expand cinematic poeticism. His minimalist, visual style values suggestion over dialogue and embraces the magical and surreal.
Currently based in Glasgow due to family commitments, Hasan is working on a documentary and conceptualizing new film projects inspired by Scotland’s rich stories and landscapes. Despite his geographic displacement, his cinematic focus remains deeply tied to human stories shaped by place and memory. “In this film, I am inviting the audiences to witness a vibrant yet fragile metropolis through a lens of realism, exploring the delicate balance between survival, emptiness, and empathy in modern urban existence,” Mahde Hasan has the last word.
