A child asking what rape means, a grieving father searching for his daughter’s body after a deadly factory fire. For student filmmakers, these are more than stories for the screen.

They are ways of making sense of realities around them and expressing what they may otherwise struggle to say.

At the 17th International Inter-University Short Film Festival (IIUSFF) arranged by Dhaka University Film Society (DUFS) this impulse was particularly visible.

This year, DUFS introduced Reels of Resistance, a new category dedicated to films dealing with human rights, injustice, discrimination, oppression and inequality.

Of the 1,269 films submitted to the festival from 92 countries, 289 came under the category, including 36 from Bangladesh.

For some young filmmakers, the decision to make such films begins with something they have witnessed or found impossible to ignore.

Al Amin, a Fine Arts student at the University of Dhaka, said a deadly fire at a garment factory and chemical warehouse in Mirpur inspired his team to tell a story about structural violence and its human consequences.

“Despite grieving the loss of his daughter, the father was primarily trying to find her body because the government would not provide financial assistance unless the body was recovered,” he said, describing what his team witnessed at the scene.

“That incident inspired the story of our film. We wanted to show how structural violence not only causes financial and physical harm to people, but also gradually erodes human emotions such as grief, anger and love.”

For Jeetu, the starting point was a growing sense of helplessness while witnessing reports of violence against children.

Towsif Ahmed Jeetu, a student of Television, Film and Photography, said repeated reports of child sexual violence disturbed him and eventually compelled him to respond through filmmaking.

“I was observing this issue, and I was trying to avoid those news reports because I couldn’t take them,” he said.

“But I actually couldn’t do that because, out of a sense of responsibility, I kept thinking that we are not able to do anything.”

That discomfort became the basis of his film, built around a child asking his sister what rape means.

Jeetu said the story came from thinking about children who become victims of sexual violence without even understanding what is happening to them.

“They know nothing, but things happen to them,” he said.

For these students, the camera becomes more than a technical tool. It becomes a means to question what they see around them.

But turning those questions into films is not easy.

Jeetu said his team had to finance the production themselves, with members contributing small amounts of money.

“We had to finish the shooting within one day. And because we didn’t have the financial capacity beyond that, we simply couldn’t afford it,” he said.

The tight schedules forced the team to compromise on shots and improvise during production. Yet the members managed to complete their first short film together.

That combination of limited resources and a desire to tell meaningful stories is part of what makes student filmmaking significant, said DUFS President Rehnuma Shahreen.

“From these initiatives, we always try to highlight contemporary issues, crises, or struggles through our activities,” she said.

She said Reels of Resistance was introduced to address ongoing social and political unrest, disorder and injustice at national and global levels.

For Professor Habiba Rahman of the University of Dhaka’s Department of Television, Film and Photography, the importance of the festival lies in giving young people a platform to portray realities that might otherwise remain unexplored.

“Through filmmaking, young people constantly try to portray the realities of society,” she said.

“By bringing these realities to the screen, they create opportunities to question them and, at the same time, search for answers.”

Participants are not limited to film students, she said. Young people from different backgrounds are using filmmaking to portray social realities, inconsistencies, injustices and inequalities.

“If you want to know about or understand a particular issue, there are few mediums as powerful as film,” she said.

Started in 2007, IIUSFF has developed into an international platform for student filmmakers. But for the young people behind the films, its significance goes beyond competition or recognition.

It gives them an audience for stories born from what they have witnessed, what disturbs them and the questions they want society to confront.

As they continue to work with limited resources, these students are finding in short films a space to experiment, question and, perhaps most importantly, speak.