From “Show Boat” through “Ship of Fools” to “Titanic,” if a certain strain of Hollywood melodrama has taught us anything, it’s that all of human life is to be found on a passenger boat — our dreams and desires and social differences somehow made clearer at some distance from dry land.
Bangladeshi filmmaker Kamar Ahmad Simon applies much the same philosophy to his delightful documentary “Day After …,” albeit with the accompanying glamour removed.
Boarding a creaky, century-old paddle steamer for a two-day river commute from the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka to the country’s Khulna region, .The loose, entertaining result is equal parts leisurely travelogue, observational social study and droll real-life comedy of errors, and premiered in competition at IDFA to an enthusiastic audience reception.
Arriving nine years after Simon’s last theatrical documentary, “Are You Listening!” — a study of a community recovering from ruinous flooding that won top honors
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