Rubaiyat Hossain’s The Difficult Bride is set to make its world premiere at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival on Saturday, 5 September 2026, becoming the first Bangladeshi feature to screen in the festival’s Orizzonti section.

The 88-minute film will have eight screenings at the festival, which began on 2 September at Lido di Venezia and runs until 12 September. Its first screening is scheduled for 7pm local time at Sala Casinò, followed by another at 10pm at Sala Volpi. Both screenings are for pass holders, press and industry attendees.

Public screenings will begin on 6 September with a 2:15pm show at Sala Darsena. On 7 September, the film will screen at Astra 2 at 4:30pm and Astra 1 at 5pm.

Set around a traditional beauty parlour in Dhaka, The Difficult Bride follows Zaineen, a bride-to-be whose wedding preparations gradually become a struggle over her body and identity. As the pressure surrounding her appearance intensifies, her body becomes a site of resistance.

The film’s story traces back to an experience Hossain had as a seven-year-old while visiting a Dhaka beauty parlour with her mother.

“There was a bride who died there,” Hossain told Variety. “Everyone knew this story from our generation, and I remember being seven, and even at that time, I had visualised this story. It was in sepia for some reason, I don’t know, but I completely had the visuals in my head, and it’s something that always stayed with me.”

Hossain said the film also draws from her own experience and explores the pressures surrounding women’s bodies and beauty standards.

“My own self and my own body became a part of the film,” she said. “My embodied experience of being a female in my own body and how I feel is something I tried to communicate in the film. And that is why it became supernatural, because a lot of the things are not logical. That is where the grotesque comes in, that is where the lizards and the snakes come in.”

The film explores how patriarchal beauty standards can also be upheld by women. Azmeri Haque Badhon plays the salon owner who enforces beauty standards on Zaineen, including a scene involving facial injections.

“It’s also about how women can be some of the biggest upholders and sustainers of patriarchy and the patriarchal system,” Hossain said. “It’s not only men; women also participate in this. It’s a system of power. It takes both to participate in it.”

While the film includes traces of Bangladesh’s July 2024 unrest, Hossain said she would not describe it as being set around that period.

“I wouldn’t say the film is set around the time of July,” she said. “I tried to create like a reality of Dhaka where there is political violence outside, there is a lot of violence against women. Women’s rights have always been an issue in Bangladesh.”

Hossain described The Difficult Bride alongside her earlier films Under Construction and Made in Bangladesh as part of a trilogy exploring different classes of Bangladeshi women.

“‘Under Construction’ talked about a middle-class woman, ‘Made in Bangladesh’ talked about a working-class woman, and I think ‘The Difficult Bride’ talks about the kind of the ultra-wealthy population of the tri-state,” she said, referring to Dhaka’s Gulshan-Baridhara area. “Even in this gilded cage, even with all these privileges, you can’t be free.”

Zaineen Chowdhury Karim makes her acting debut in the lead role. Karim previously worked as Hossain’s assistant director before stepping into the role following changes to the original cast after the disruption caused by July.

“She is so beautiful and I feel like she is the character herself,” Hossain said. “I might have auditioned her like around 15, 20 times.”

The cast also includes Sunerah Kamal, Badhon and Rikita Nondine Shimu, all three of whom are Bangladesh National Film Award winners.

Hossain, who teaches part-time at Smith College, said the pressures explored in the film extend beyond South Asia.

“I see that a woman who is coming from Mexico or Guatemala or Bangladesh or Vermont have same issues when it comes to this specific idea of beauty and submitting,” she said.

The Difficult Bride is an international co-production between France’s Les Films de l’Après-Midi, Bangladesh’s Khona Talkies, Portugal’s Midas Filmes, Norway’s Barentsfilm and Germany’s Tandem Production. It received support from the first edition of the Fondazione Prada Film Fund, while Films Boutique is handling world sales.

The film will travel to the Toronto and BFI London film festivals following its Venice premiere.

For Hossain, the film also represents a shift in her filmmaking approach.

“I’m not tied to social realism anymore,” she said. “I really relied on my body and my instincts to make creative decisions, and I really enjoyed the process.”