Mon, 22 Sep 2025, 10:00 pm
Opinion

Bangabandhu’s interaction with world leaders King of Bhutan in Dhaka

King Jigme Singye Wangchuck of Bhutan arrived in Dhaka on 28 December 1974 on a three-day state visit to Bangladesh. He was accompanied by his sister Ashi Dechen Wangmo Wangchuck.

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The legacy of 2020

Various globally noteworthy and important events occur every single year, which make it to the history books but certain years are much more noteworthy and significant than others and that

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Bangabandhu – The People’s Protagonist-41

“I have never believed in the politics of conspiracy. All my life I have taken part in politics openly. I’ve always said whatever I believed was the right thing to

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Empowerment of Women: Notion and Beyond

Women started raising their voice about taking command over their lives, and contributing to making the decisions that positively impact their lifestyle long before the word ‘women empowerment’ became widespread

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Keep Informal Sector on the Agenda for Inclusive Growth

Every morning, around 150-200 day labourers wait for work on a footpath in the capital’s Malibagh rail gate intersection. Each of them carries a shovel and a basket. They gather

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Young Leaders in the Party

It was the month of August this year, when I had an opportunity to participate in a webinar discussion moderated by former Foreign Secretary Ambassador Farooq Sobhan with Mr. Muhammad

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He was happy with people’s love and affection

The Prison Diaries of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman reveals vividly how much he had to sacrifice during his entire political career for the struggling people of Bangladesh. It is indeed

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Education Battered by Covid-19, NGOs’ Response and State Reaction

A Bengali newspaper’s heading titled ‘Government is disgusted with the bizarre works of NGOs for primary education’ drew my attention, making me feel constrained to add something more to this

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Indo-Bangladesh Friendly Ties Getting Stronger

Nationalism is basically a strong feeling for a certain territory. The collective feeling of an entire population living in a certain territory may be termed as one kind of nationalism.

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Let Our Public Intellectuals Speak for Us Abroad

Bangladesh’s history needs to go out to the world. With the nation preparing to observe the fiftieth anniversary of independence next year, it is important that we reach out to

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The megastar plays a philosophy professor shaken by a student’s sexual assault allegation against a colleague in Luca Guadagnino’s new film – and she’s easily the best thing about it. Julia Roberts doesn’t make many films these days. She was in Leave the World Behind in 2023; in 2022, there was her tropical romantic comedy with George Clooney, Ticket to Paradise; and then we have to jump all the way back to 2018 for her previous turn in Ben Is Back. But you can see why she chose to star in After the Hunt, a contentious campus drama directed by Luca Guadagnino (Call Me By Your Name, Challengers). Roberts is on screen for almost every one of its 139 minutes, and she is the monumental centre around which its chaos and controversy swirl. It’s the kind of heavyweight role that gets awards nominations if it goes to the right person – and Roberts is definitely the right person. Her character is Alma, a philosophy professor at Yale University. Striding regally around its leafy quadrangles in a chic white suit that matches her blonde hair, this combatively intelligent alpha female is adored by everyone who knows her. Her husband Frederik (Michael Stuhlbarg) is resigned to the fact that he loves her more than she loves him, and is willing to make whimsical jokes about the imbalance; Hank (Andrew Garfield), a would-be rebellious friend and colleague, is even more flirtatious with her than he is with everyone else; and her favourite PhD student, Maggie (Ayo Edebiri), worships her – which could explain why she is Alma’s favourite PhD student. It seems as if the status quo might soon be upset, though, as either Alma or Hank – or perhaps both – is expected to be granted permanent tenure. But then something far more drastic happens. The day after a boozy party in Alma and Frederik’s book-lined flat, Maggie tells Alma that Hank walked her home and then “crossed a line”. Alma is sympathetic – but only up to a point. There is no evidence of assault, so she isn’t sure whether to trust the word of a new friend over an old one, especially at such a critical moment in her career. And maybe, her thinking goes, lines were crossed at the party anyway, considering that teachers and students were hugging each other while knocking back expensive wine. “Roberts’ Alma is a coiled spring: her steely stillness makes her ferocity all the more powerful” It’s refreshing to see a grown-up Hollywood film that takes on contemporary issues: feminism, cancel culture, identity politics, and the generation gap. But After the Hunt is more of an admirable project than an engaging drama, because it never stops reminding you of how clever it wants to be. Guadagnino keeps showing off his quirky camera angles and intrusive music choices. The screenplay, by Nora Garrett, squeezes too much philosophical jargon into the dialogue, and too many tangential scenes and subplots into the structure. You might think that the alleged assault would be a big enough deal for any film, but Alma is given mysterious abdominal pains and guilty secrets, and Maggie is overloaded with significance as a queer, black, plagiarism-prone young woman with a non-binary partner and rich parents who are major donors to the university. In theory, viewers of After the Hunt should leave the cinema arguing about its subject matter. In practice, they’re more likely to be asking each other what was going on and what it meant. It’s all a bit much, basically. Garfield, miscast as a denim-clad dude who is, it is implied, roughly the same age as Roberts’ character, shouts and swears and waves his arms with a quantity-over-quality approach to acting. Stuhlbarg’s flouncing and sing-song delivery are presumably meant to be irritating, but perhaps not as irritating as they actually are. At the heart of it all, though, Roberts is a different matter. She understands that less can be more. Her Alma is a coiled spring: her steely stillness makes her ferocity all the more powerful and her pain all the more intense. Her muttering is scarier than Garfield’s yelling, and when she glares at someone, they stay glared at. It’s an expertly controlled performance which demonstrates why Roberts has been a Hollywood icon for so long, and why she could well be in line for her second Oscar, 25 years after Erin Brockovich. After the Hunt would have been better if everyone else involved had had some of that control, too.

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