Azmeri Haque Badhon considers her life to have started just four years back. The Bangladeshi actor, whose Rehana Maryam Noor directed by Abdullah Mohammad Saad was the first Bangladeshi film to be selected in the Un Certain Regard section at the Cannes Film Festival and was the opening film at the 26th International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK), had lived the 34 years before that following all the norms set by the society for women. With a life hardened by traumatic experiences and a mind broadened by art, she has decided to live on her own terms with all the rights and freedoms, and ensure the same for her daughter.
Her life has much in common with the character of Rehana, an assistant professor at a medical college and a single mother, who decides to fight against a professor who sexually harrassed a student.
"It was my life experiences which brought the director to me, because he saw Rehana in me. It helped me a lot though it was a painful process for me because when I was recalling all my past traumas. I am not a trained actor and do not know method-acting. I used to be a superficial actor, who just wanted to do it for survival. I am a very sensitive person who cries for my own pain as well as for others. The director wanted the pain of the character to be real, but he stood by me when I had nervous breakdowns while going through the process," says Badhon, in an interview to The Hindu.
