ধ্যাৎ! (Dhet!)
2026 · 9m · Bangladesh
Directed by Ummid Ashraf
Tones: contemplative, dark, melancholic
In Dhaka, a ride-sharing motorcyclist works a regular night shift, riding dark highways while his parents wait at home — a noirish nine-minute ride through a city that is both menace and refuge.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A noir setup in Dhaka could've been another Western genre transplant, but Ashraf makes the weird move of centering the *waiting*—the parents at home—which flips the whole power dynamic and makes the night ride feel less like crime-thriller cosplay and more like a genuinely unsettling family portrait.
The nine-minute structure suggests a classical dramatic arc, yet the film appears to resist conventional climax in favor of sustained atmospheric tension; it situates itself thoughtfully within the lineage of South Asian neo-noir while maintaining a contemplative reserve that feels distinctly its own.
There's a single choice here that makes it work: the decision to keep the parents *present but offscreen*, waiting—it forces everything into the motorcyclist's interior, and suddenly every dark highway becomes a conversation with someone who isn't there, which transforms a budget constraint into the film's whole emotional engine.
Reviews
What is most arresting is the way the filmmaking itself becomes the very feeling the film seeks to impress upon the viewer. The length and breadth of the highway seem to consume you as much as it does the wandering protagonist.