"My Bicycle" (Mor Thengari) is the first feature film made in Chakma language, a language which is used by a large indigenous group in Bangladesh next to Bengali, which comprises 98 percent of the total population. This is also the debut feature of Aung Rakhine, a member of another indigenous group, Rakhine. The film tells the story of a Chakma family, the village the members of the family live in and their culture. It also depicts how modernity and its changing agents are making the simple Chakma lives complex.
According to Bangladesh census 2011, there live nearly 5,00,000 Chakma people in Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), the south-eastern part of Bangladesh. This population is nearly 60% of total indigenous people who live in CHT and 0.33% of total population of Bangladesh. There are 14 ethnic communities in CHT, the Chakma are the largest, followed by Marma and Tripura, then the Mro and the Tanchangya. Some other groups are the Bawm (or Bom), the Chak (or Sak), the Khumi, the Khyang, the Kuki, the Lusai (or Mizo), the Murang, the Pamkho, and the Riang.
Kamol, a Chakma man comes back home from town after six months. During his absence, his wife Devi and his little son Debu struggled a lot yet managed to survive. Kamol lost his factory job along with the payments of the last months. However, he came back with a new bicycle which was identified as a new technology in the remote hilly Chakma village. Kamol thought of using the bicycle for generating revenue. He starts carrying people and goods from village to the nearer Bazar in exchange of small fares. This new earning source brings happiness to his family. He sends his son to school. He repairs his dilapidated house. Meanwhile, there is an accident during a trip and a passenger is injured. In a village court, it was decided he could carry only goods and not people anymore. Everything is going fine, however, until some muggers demand money as it was perceived he had become ‘rich’. He refuses to do so. In a bad morning, he finds his bicycle damaged and left under the hill. Shattered Kamol travels to town to repair the bicycle. While he is crossing the Kaptai Lake, he realizes another boat is approaching from the opposite direction towards the village with a new bicycle along with a television set and a motorbike.
