"When I read Utpal Sarkar's screenplay, which had the story-line by me," said Bhattacharya,

"I thought of the actors' personalities to match the cast. I got to know Raisul Islam Asad in 1998 when I was assisting Buddhodeb Das Gupta in Uttora (which was also included in the festival). When I asked him to work with me, he in turn invited me to Dhaka along with my script. Sitting in Hotel Rajmoni in January 2005, he promptly agreed and we began working on the film without further ado."

The plot, as Bhattacharya said, presents the simple story of a family tradition of mat weaving in a little village. The poverty-stricken protagonist makes a mat slowly by hand, failing to meet the demands of the go-between, The wife (Amina) of the mat weaver is determined to convince the clever go-between, and in the process develops a weakness for him. She is also beset with the dilemma of whether to modernise the mat weaving process. Thus the socio-economic theme is present as the plot unfolds. Through the film, the director depicts how an artisan makes sacrifices to resist the lure of modernisation and industrialisation.

Asked to speak about her interest in filmmaking, Bhattacharya said that she started her career with theatre along with Asok Mukharjee and Bibhash Chakraborty in 1991. Then she went into the National School of Drama in Delhi, in the children's wing in Theatre in Education (TIE) for over three years, and assisted Buddhodeb Dasgupta, Ritupurno Ghosh and others. She went into direction, as she puts it, for economic reasons, as she couldn't find a scope in acting.

So far she has directed five films including Noey Chhoey, Chilekothar Shipai, Chaunchir and Madur. Director Anwar Jamal persuaded her to enter Madur in the recent film festival in Dhaka organised by Rainbow Film Society. "I wanted to reach out to the viewers of Bangladesh and I've enjoyed every bit of my stay here," she said. After this the film travels to France and Norway. Her documentary, Voice of Monimala has won an award in Norway.

Puja Bedi, co-maker of Maqbool which drew a packed house at the Public Library recently, said the she was here also with a German film in Bangla, Shadows of time, which was done in Kolkata, with a German co-producer, Bavaria Film. Maqbool, she explained, is an adaptation of Shakespeare's Macbeth, set in the Mumbai underworld. The film premiered at the Toronto Film Festival and has been taken to over 30 film festivals including the ones in Berlin, Marakesh and Goa. "It's an honour for us to bring it to Dhaka, The story-line involves the aging underworld don, Abbaji, his young mistress Nimmi, and Maqbool, an ambitious gangster, who wins over the beautiful seductress," she said.

Dwelling on her career in the film world, Puja Bedi said, "I've begun in films for the channel Kaleidescope Entertainment. I'm representing the filmmaker, Bobby Bedi, with Electric Moon, Bandit Queen and Fire. She and her co-producers continued with Sathiya. She said that she has been assisting Bobby Bedi for over 10 years.