Bird in Flight Prize ‘19 Winner: No Quarter

Shadman Shahid, Netherlands

87% of the women in Bangladesh are victims of domestic violence in Bangladesh.

The numbers tell us that Bangladeshi society, including the victims, take it as a normal part of life. In many cases, the couple stays in such abusive relationships for years. The victims remain silent, enduring throughout time and the abuser stays unpunished and unchanged. No Quarter is a story of such a couple, Alo and Sagor, who have been in an abusive relationship for more than 20 years now.

It is a Docu-fiction created based on the many interviews that I have taken of Alo. During the interviews, she shared memories that have left the deepest marks, like sharing snapshots from a family album except these snapshots are not as biased towards happy memories as most family albums are. I have tried to visualize her story by making a Docu-fictional family album using images from their actual family album and staged images that were created based on the memories she shared with me.