Movies, memory, manipulation and movement

On a cold December night way back in 1993, moviegoers in New York and London shuffled out of theaters in silence. Many were in tears, clutching tissues, as the credits of Schindler’s List rolled against the haunting notes of a violin. It wasn’t just a film they had watched, it was a confrontation with history, a reckoning with evil, and—depending on who you asked—a cinematic monument to memory or a carefully crafted narrative that blurred fact and fiction. In the weeks that followed, classrooms across America began screening the film as part of Holocaust education, cementing it not only as a work of art but as a political and cultural tool. For millions who never opened a history book on the subject, Spielberg’s black-and-white epic became a part of history.
Thousands of miles away, a decade later, audiences in India were laughing their way through Munna Bhai MBBS. It was a wildly entertaining comedy about a gangster pretending to be a doctor, but underneath the slapstick lay something powerful: a critique of the medical establishment and a plea for compassion in healthcare. “JaadukiJhappi”—the magic hug—became a national meme, softening the public’s perception of hospitals. Shortly afterwards, fake doctors arrested across India were derisively nicknamed ‘Munna Bhai’, and even High Court judges invoked the film while lamenting the state of medical education. The court also ordered a change in procedure for emergency patients to receive treatment first, rather than forcing doctors to wait for legal procedures. A comedy had slipped into the bloodstream of law and policy.
These two examples—one rooted in tragedy, the other in satire—underscore a more profound truth: cinema does not stop at the screen. Films enter our conversations, shape our sympathies, and sometimes even rewrite our laws. From Hollywood to Bollywood, from activist documentaries like Blackfish to climate manifestos like An Inconvenient Truth, movies have long done more than entertain. They have reframed history, challenged power, and nudged societies toward change—or, at times, toward propaganda. As Bangladesh grapples with questions of identity, soft power, and its place in global culture, the story of cinema’s psychological and political influence elsewhere raises an urgent question: can we, too, harness the screen not just to tell stories but to transform realities?
If cinema can heal, inspire, or humanize, it can also distort, erase, and weaponize. No movement has grasped this better than the Zionist project. From Hollywood epics such as Exodus (1960), which glorified the creation of Israel while erasing Palestinian dispossession, to countless thrillers and dramas that depict Arabs as terrorists and Israelis as reluctant defenders of democracy, film has been a critical tool in normalizing occupation. The global acceptance of Israeli narratives, even amidst decades of displacement and violence in Palestine, has been aided not only by diplomacy and lobbying but also by cinema. The ongoing devastation in Gaza is not divorced from these cultural battles—it is, in many ways, their culmination.
India, too, has weaponized cinema. Bollywood blockbusters like Border (1997), Gadar (2001), and Uri: The Surgical Strike (2019) have celebrated military triumphs and stoked nationalist fervour, casting Pakistan as the perpetual enemy and Muslims as internal others. Even lighter films, such as romantic comedies or thrillers, often reinforce subtle stereotypes, ensuring the “us versus them” narrative seeps into everyday imagination. At the same time, cinema has also been used positively in India—films like Rang De Basanti (2006) and Article 15 (2019) stirred political awareness, urging young people to question corruption, caste injustice, and complacency. This duality highlights cinema’s paradox: it can both open doors to empathy and slam them shut.
Across the Atlantic, Hollywood has long understood its role in shaping not only American identity but also global perceptions. During World War II, films like Frank Capra’s ‘Why We Fight’ series served as propaganda, rallying public support for the war effort. Later, Cold War thrillers, from Red Dawn (1984) to numerous James Bond films, cemented the image of the Soviet Union as villainous and the United States as a bastion of freedom. More recently, films like Zero Dark Thirty (2012) and American Sniper (2014) have been accused of justifying U.S. military interventions and sanitizing torture.
Yet Hollywood has also been a force for progressive change. ‘Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967)’ challenged interracial taboos during the Civil Rights era, while Philadelphia (1993) brought the AIDS crisis into mainstream consciousness. ‘Erin Brockovich (2000)’ spotlighted corporate pollution, and ‘Spotlight (2015)’ forced audiences to confront systemic abuse within the Catholic Church. Even animated films like WALL-E (2008) or Frozen II (2019) have carried environmental and anti-colonial themes. In Hollywood’s case, cinema has been both a megaphone for state narratives and a thorn in the side of entrenched power.
Cinema in China is both a tool of the state and, at times, a quiet act of rebellion. The Chinese government has long recognized film’s potential as a propaganda tool, dating back to the Maoist era when revolutionary cinema glorified the Communist struggle and vilified the state’s enemies. In today’s China, the same strategy continues with a modern twist.
Blockbusters such as Wolf Warrior 2 (2017) and The Battle at Lake Changjin (2021) not only smashed box-office records but also served as cultural declarations of China’s military might and moral superiority. In Wolf Warrior 2, the protagonist—a fearless Chinese soldier—rescues African villagers and outshines Western mercenaries, signaling Beijing’s ambition to present itself as a benevolent, protective global power. These spectacles are not merely entertainment, but also soft-power tools, synchronized with foreign -policy goals such as the Belt and Road Initiative.
Yet beneath this state-driven cinematic juggernaut lies another China. Directors such as JiaZhangke (Still Life, A Touch of Sin) portray the dislocation and alienation caused by China’s rapid modernization. Lou Ye (Spring Fever, Summer Palace) employs intimate, often taboo subjects—such as sexuality and political dissent—to capture lives that have been left invisible by official narratives. These works rarely screen domestically without heavy edits, but they have found recognition abroad, signaling how cinema becomes a battleground between state mythmaking and artistic truth-telling.
Few countries embody the tension between censorship and creativity more vividly than Iran. Since the 1979 revolution, the state has imposed strict guidelines on filmmakers, banning overt political dissent, controlling depictions of women, and censoring sensitive topics. But Iranian directors have turned these constraints into opportunities, crafting allegories that slip past the censors while speaking volumes to global audiences.
Abbas Kiarostami, widely regarded as one of cinema’s greatest auteurs, employed minimalist storytelling in films such as Close-Up (1990) and Taste of Cherry (1997) to explore questions of identity, truth, and mortality. His films rarely confront politics directly, but their humanism subtly challenges authoritarian control.
Asghar Farhadi, perhaps the most internationally recognized Iranian filmmaker today, has perfected the art of embedding social critique in intimate family dramas. A Separation (2011), which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, portrays the unraveling of a marriage against the backdrop of Iran’s legal system, exposing the contradictions of class, gender, and justice. The Salesman (2016) likewise examines violence and morality within a repressive social structure.
In Iran, cinema is a form of resistance cloaked in allegory. Filmmakers use silence, ambiguity, and metaphor as their weapons, ensuring that while censorship might limit the literal, it cannot extinguish the symbolic.
South Africa’s cinematic journey mirrors its political one. Under apartheid, state-controlled cinema reinforced segregationist ideology, portraying Black South Africans as marginal or invisible. Yet underground and international films exposed the brutal realities of racial oppression.
With the fall of apartheid in the 1990s, cinema emerged as a powerful tool for national reckoning and reconciliation. Cry, the Beloved Country (1995), based on Alan Paton’s classic novel, depicted the human cost of racial injustice and sought to heal divides through empathy. Later, Invictus (2009) dramatized Nelson Mandela’s use of rugby to foster unity, illustrating how sport—and, by extension, cinema—could be mobilized to envision a shared future.
But South African cinema hasn’t stopped at reconciliation narratives. Films like Tsotsi (2005), which won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, confront urban poverty and crime, highlighting the lingering inequalities of the post-apartheid era. More recently, independent films have grappled with themes of corruption, gender-based violence, and xenophobia, underscoring that while apartheid may have ended, cinema remains a mirror for the unfinished work of social justice.
In Latin America, cinema has often been a frontline in the struggle against dictatorship, inequality, and historical amnesia. During the brutal regimes of Chile, Argentina, and Brazil in the 1970s and 1980s, filmmakers risked their lives to document forced disappearances, torture, and repression. These underground works became crucial archives of memory, preserving truths that authoritarian regimes sought to erase and suppress.
Following the end of the dictatorship, Latin American cinema shifted toward reclaiming history and reinterpreting the revolution. Walter Salles’s The Motorcycle Diaries (2004) reintroduced Che Guevara to a new generation, presenting him not as an icon but as a young man awakening to injustice across the continent. The film’s global popularity turned Guevara’s story into a meditation on inequality and the transformative power of empathy.
Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma (2018), while deeply personal, broadened this scope by weaving Mexico’s class inequalities and suppressed histories into an intimate story of a domestic worker. By foregrounding the marginalized, Roma resisted erasure, reminding global audiences that revolutions are not just fought on battlefields but in kitchens, alleys, and classrooms.
Across the region, films have also interrogated colonial legacies and modern-day neo-liberalism. Documentaries like The Hour of the Furnaces (Argentina, 1968) framed cinema itself as a weapon of revolution, while more recent works, such as City of God (Brazil, 2002), confronted audiences with the violence and despair bred by inequality. In Latin America, cinema has never been neutral—it has been an act of survival, memory, and resistance.
The global survey reveals a sobering reality: cinema is never neutral. It can sustain occupation, as in Israel’s carefully cultivated narratives, it can inflame nationalist hatred, as in India’s muscular war films, it can justify empire, as Hollywood has done time and again. But cinema can also expose truths, amplify the voices of the marginalized, and inspire change—from South Africa’s reconciliation to environmental movements galvanized by documentaries like An Inconvenient Truth or Seaspiracy.
For Bangladesh, the lesson is clear. Film is not just about entertainment, it is about power. To neglect cinema is to leave narratives—and therefore imaginations—in the hands of others. To embrace it is to claim the power to shape memory, mobilize empathy, and perhaps even redirect policy. The screen, whether in Dhaka, Delhi, Gaza, or New York, is not merely a surface on which stories are projected—it is a medium that engages with the viewer. It is a battlefield of identity, memory, and truth.
Despite a rich tradition of storytelling and a few globally recognized auteurs such as Zahir Raihan, Tareque Masud, and Mostofa Sarwar Farooki, Bangladeshi cinema remains underutilized as a vehicle of cultural influence. Its potential to shape national identity, spark public debates, and enter the global imagination remains unrealized, mainly overshadowed by the dominance of Bollywood and the pervasive reach of Hollywood. While recent collaborations with Kolkata signal that cross-border cultural exchanges are possible, Bangladesh must broaden its vision. Cinema’s power today is not only defined by the West, it is increasingly shaped in the East. South Korea’s meteoric rise, as seen in films like Parasite and series like Squid Game, or China’s global export of state-backed blockbusters, shows that cinematic influence is no longer unidirectional.
For Bangladesh, the task is twofold: to invest in nurturing homegrown talent and narratives that resonate with its people, and to seek collaborations across Asia, Africa, and Latin America, where shared histories of colonialism, resistance, and aspiration can create fertile grounds for storytelling alliances. Cinema can be more than entertainment—it can be Bangladesh’s soft power, a tool for identity, diplomacy, and transformation. To ignore this is to leave imagination itself to others.

The writer is a political and international affairs analyst. simonbksp@gmail.com