Iluminace 2025, 37(2):115-132 | DOI: 10.58193/ilu.1815

The Living Script. Proposing an Adaptive Practice in Humaira Bilkis’s Things I Could Never Tell My Mother (2022)

Imran Firdaus ORCID...
Independent University, Bangladesh ✉

This paper examines Bangladeshi filmmaker Humaira Bilkis’s feature film, Things I Could Never Tell My Mother, through genetic criticism and screenwriting theories to propose the concept of the living script: a dynamic narrative framework that evolves in response to real-time discoveries, emotional shifts, and ethical dilemmas. Bilkis’s film exemplifies this process, weaving intergenerational dialogues and confessional sequences to negotiate complex cultural and inter-religious boundaries within Bangladeshi society. By analysing early drafts, directorial notes, and an interview with the filmmaker, the study reveals how Bilkis’s narrative adapts to the contingencies of production. This fluid approach embodies a self-reflexive negotiation between storytelling and cultural discourse, engages with core debates in documentary theory, and offers a symbolic dialogue from a Global South perspective. Ultimately, the concept of the living script provides an adaptive framework for understanding screenwriting as a site of negotiation between intention, collaboration, and reality, particularly in narrative films employing documentary aesthetics.

Klíčová slova: Bangladeshi film, creative documentary, ethical dilemma, living script, transcultural transfer

This paper examines Bangladeshi filmmaker Humaira Bilkis’s feature film, Things I Could Never Tell My Mother, through genetic criticism and screenwriting theories to propose the concept of the living script: a dynamic narrative framework that evolves in response to real-time discoveries, emotional shifts, and ethical dilemmas. Bilkis’s film exemplifies this process, weaving intergenerational dialogues and confessional sequences to negotiate complex cultural and inter-religious boundaries within Bangladeshi society. By analysing early drafts, directorial notes, and an interview with the filmmaker, the study reveals how Bilkis’s narrative adapts to the contingencies of production. This fluid approach embodies a self-reflexive negotiation between storytelling and cultural discourse, engages with core debates in documentary theory, and offers a symbolic dialogue from a Global South perspective. Ultimately, the concept of the living script provides an adaptive framework for understanding screenwriting as a site of negotiation between intention, collaboration, and reality, particularly in narrative films employing documentary aesthetics.

Vloženo: 16. únor 2025; Revidováno: 13. srpen 2025; Přijato: 2. říjen 2025; Zveřejněno: 10. listopad 2025  Zobrazit citaci

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Firdaus, I. (2025). The Living Script. Proposing an Adaptive Practice in Humaira Bilkis’s Things I Could Never Tell My Mother (2022). Iluminace, 37(2), 115-132. doi: 10.58193/ilu.1815
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