Ishtiyak Ahmad Zihad’s debut feature “The Blind Girl and an Elephant” had its world premiere at the Shanghai International Film Festival, competing in the Asian New Talent section.

The film centers on three women in a remote Bangladeshi village – blind Momi, schoolgirl Hima, and pregnant Laili – who dream of escaping a world shaped by superstition and religious conservatism, with consequences that grow increasingly dire for each of them.

The elephant of the title is no accident. “In my thought or assumption, I think that women in our country see themselves as a giant elephant, but they are harmless,” Zihad says. “But males see them as a threat.”

Zihad, 24, grew up in rural Bangladesh, where patriarchy was the social order he witnessed up close. “My mother, my sister, and my mother, they face different kinds of [negative] experiences in our society,” he says. “It was the main crucial point that inspired me to tell a story like that.”

The film is shot in black and white – a deliberate artistic and thematic choice. “I believe that color is realistic, but black-and-white is more realistic in my film style,” says Zihad. “Those three girls have a black-and-white, colorless life. So I want to portray their world that way.”

One of the more harrowing threads in the film involves a protagonist who is molested by a religious figure but has no recourse to justice. Zihad traces the problem to distorted religious practice: “They don’t have proper Islamic education, so they apply their own experience based on decision.” On the broader silence around such crimes, he says: “Media does not capture these kinds of things because it’s a sensitive issue and it dignifies our religious point of view.”

Female friendship is the film’s emotional center. Zihad – a twin whose sister has many female friends – says proximity to women shaped his understanding of those bonds. “This element provoked me to understand this kind of relationship,” he says.

Zihad studied film and media at Jatiya Kabi Kazi Nazrul Islam University, where his teacher Manoj Pramanik became the film’s producer. The project is a Manpachitra production, with German producer Christoph Thoke of Mogador Film serving as associate producer and Fazle Hasan Shishir as co-producer. “I always try to tell a story about our own people, their rights, their dreams, their desires,” the filmmaker says.

He points to a wider shift in Bangladeshi cinema, noting the three Bangladeshi titles selected for International Film Festival Rotterdam – including “Master,” which won the Big Screen Award. “I think there is a new wave, because they are all new-generation directors,” Zihad says.