Nine Months to Freedom: The Story of Bangladesh (1972)

There are a number of documentaries on the Liberation War, but many of them were not shot during the war. Indian filmmaker S. Sukhdev's "9 Months To Freedom" is a visual document of our struggles to emerge as an independent nation, and an account of the loss that we incurred during that period.

Shot in 1971, it is a treasure trove of rare footage and interviews that are indispensable parts of history. Sukhdev walked from one camp to another to record his film and watched closely the agonies of Bangladeshis, and the brutality of the Pakistani military. It mainly depicts the miserable lives of refugees; shows how people died inside and outside camps. It narrates how villages were burnt, how unarmed people were shot dead, how people died without food and how they walked thousands of miles to reach a refugee camp.

Powerful visuals with touching interpretations have made this documentary a powerful one; it is one the few films that remind us of the nine months of struggle. Apart from only visualizing the war, it shows the deplorable conditions of hundreds of thousands of families, the response of the international community, and reactions of the Pakistani rulers. In this documentary, we see horrific footage of December 14 taken by Zahir Raihan. It ends with our victory scene in sync with a 1971 version of the national anthem.