24/06/2026
Screening নধরের ভেলা (Nadharer Bhela) / The Slow Man and His Raft
Movie Screening নধরের ভেলা (Nadharer Bhela) / The Slow Man and His Raft
Pradipta Bhattacharyya · 2025 · 179 mins | Bengali Spoken | Subtitles English
RSVP: [email protected]
AstaroTheatro · 26 June 2026 · Doors 18:30 · Film 19:00
Sint Jansstraat 37, Amsterdam (5 minutes from Centraal Station).
“Nadhar, a man deemed dysfunctional for his extremely sluggish movements, becomes part of a travelling circus, where his condition turns into spectacle.”
What happens when a body does not align with the speed at which the world decides value. Around the body, a world is being sorted too quickly into what can be used, what can be shown, what can be kept as “culture”, and what can be left behind. The Manasamangal lore, a six-hundred-year-old poem most people remember as a love story and which is not, is underneath this: snake, deity, fear, protection, not as heritage, but as something still active in how life is divided, who is held and who is left outside.
The film’s journey has been as unusual as its subject. Rather than relying on conventional theatrical distribution, Nadharer Bhela has travelled through a network of independently organised screenings, community halls, town theatres, cultural spaces and self-organised gatherings across Bengal and beyond. Its circulation has depended not on multiplexes or streaming platforms, but on audiences willing to create spaces for collective viewing and conversation.
Though it travelled to Rotterdam, this is not a festival film seeking prestige from afar.
It is a film that has found its life in rooms filled with people sitting together for an evening, allowing a story to unfold at its own pace. AstaroTheatro is one of those rooms.
Suggested donation: €8–15 (sliding scale). Less is welcome, more helps support independent filmmaking and the space
