The Most Fearless

In Bangladesh, 80 percent of the population lives on less than 2 dollars a day and half of the children suffer from malnutrition, a condition caused by their mothers’ low social status. Nasima was born all the way at the bottom. When she was seven, she was abandoned by her family after she refused to beg on the streets. Later, wandering by herself on her birth place’s filthy beach, she saw a surfer in the Indian Ocean. It was Jafar Alam, the first surfer from Bangladesh. What he did, Nasima wanted to try as well. And from that moment on, Nasima could be found in the surfers’ community of Cox’s Bazar along the longest continuous sand shores in the world.

This was where Nasima learnt how to surf and eventually beat all the boys in the local competitions. In a conservative Islamic country where it is taboo for most women to even swim in public, eighteen-year-old Nasima Akter makes waves as the first female surfer from Bangladesh. Her story drew the attention of the documentary maker, Heather Kessinger, who lives in Canada. The film tells the touching tale of Nasima Akter. ‘Nasima wants to be a good Muslima, but she definitely does not want to give up on her passion for surfing,’ Heather Kessinger says in an interview. ‘By telling her story, she inspires other girls to do the same. She’s a real role model.’ This dynamic documentary about a persistent young woman is about women’s rights and shows the disparities between west and east.