Bangla

Bangla (2019) is an Italian comedy-drama written by and starring Phaim Bhuiyan, and you can watch it online on iFILM. Phaim is 22, born in Rome to a Bangladeshi Muslim family, and not at all sure where he fits.

He guards a museum by day, plays in a band, and lives in Torpignattara — a Roman neighborhood where a dozen cultures rub shoulders. At a gig he meets Asia: blunt, free, the opposite of everything he was raised to be. The attraction is instant. The catch is a rule he's never broken — no sex before marriage. Suddenly he has to squeeze love, faith, and his parents' hopes into one life.

Bhuiyan's semi-autobiographical debut is warm and quick on its feet, a sharp little portrait of a second-generation kid who is fully at home and a foreigner at the same time. Stream Bangla online on iFILM.