A REVOLUTIONARY
DOCUMENTARY FILM
In office for more than 15 consecutive years, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina oversaw significant corruption and democratic backsliding, with opposition-party leaders and critical press figures jailed, killed, or exiled.
JULY 36 will tell the story of how and why Bangladesh’s youth rose up to overthrow her regime, through the experiences of those who lived through it.
But the students’ victory isn’t the end of the story: Now, the country hangs on a precipice, its future stability uncertain, as a new coalition attempts to pick up the pieces and restore democracy in Bangladesh.
A GEN-Z UPRISING
The student uprising has been called “The first Gen-Z revolution.”
What started as a protest over jobs became a mass movement against authoritarianism and corruption.
Sheikh Hasina’s violent police response to the protests resulted in more than 1,000 deaths and 22,000 injured, before she resigned and fled the country.
After her ouster, students stepped in to direct traffic, feed the poor, and provide other essential services.
NOTABLE CHARACTERS
Nahid Islam [pictured] and Asif Mahmud, Dhaka University students who were kidnapped and tortured, only to survive and help lead the movement to overthrow a dictator.
Their friend Mahfuz Alam, a law student, called the uprising’s strategic mastermind.
Aysha Siddiqua Tithi, a young student pulled into the movement, who helped organize women, facing down bullets for a chance at a better future for her country.
Abdul Hafiz, [pictured] a retired Army general who sympathized with the youth movement and fought to keep Bangladesh’s military from firing on student protesters.
Muhammad Yunus, a Nobel Prize Laureate known for his work fighting poverty, who now must right the ship of Bangladesh as the leader of its interim government.
A NEW BANGLADESH
With Yunus bringing members of the protest movement into his cabinet, revolutionaries like Nahid, Asif, and Mahfuz now directly wield power, and must step up to deliver free and fair elections, while building a better future for their generation.
It won’t be easy—Bangladesh continues to face economic woes, natural disasters, internal strife, and the threat of Hasina’s return from exile.
With the clock ticking, can this interim government really rebuild Bangladesh and deliver on promised reforms?
Muhammad Yunus
For more than 40 years, Muhammad Yunus has been a world leader in fighting poverty and promoting sustainability. As founder of Grameen Bank, which offers loans to the poor, the microfinance pioneer and Nobel-Prize winner eventually grew his projects into a globe-spanning operation and a worldwide cause celebre. But when the student uprising ousts Hasina’s regime, Yunus is drafted into a revolution and the most difficult test of his career: running a country.
