Matir Moina

All tracks are written by A.T. Masud.

As the first Bangladeshi feature film, it was initially screened on 15 May 2002 at the 55th Cannes Film Festival in Directors' Fortnight section.[10][12] In addition to its commercial release in Europe and Americas, the film was screened at multiple festivals in later years. In August 2002, the film was screened at the Edinburgh International Film Festival and the Montreal International Film Festival in Canada.[13] In the same year on 9 October it was screened at the Sitges Film Festival in Spain,[14] and the Cairo International Film Festival in Egypt.[15]

On 11 January 2003, the film was screened at the Palm Springs International Film Festival in the United States.[16] In the same year on 9 February, it was screened at the Toronto International Film Festival. On 5 April 2003, the film was selected at the New Directors/New Film Festival, jointly organized by the Film Society of Lincoln Center in New York City and the Museum of Modern Art.[10] It was screened on 17 December at the 8th International Film Festival of Kerala in India.[17] On 15 February 2004, the film was screened at the Dublin International Film Festival in Ireland. A press screening was held on 24 March. In 2015, Matir Moina was screened at Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy as the inaugural film at the Bangladesh Film Festival.[18] In 2016, an exhibition of the film was organized at the Indian embassy at the initiative of the Bangladesh Embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.[19] In April 2019, the Bangladesh Deputy High Commission in Karachi, Pakistan, organized an exhibition of the film in Karachi in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut Dhaka.[20]

Outside its home country, the film was initially released in theatres in France. Due to its ban, the film was not initially screened commercially in Bangladesh. However, the film was later released commercially in only two theatres in Dhaka.[21] The film was released on 30 April 2004 in New York and San Francisco coastal theatres.[15][22] In October 2002, the film was released in Dhaka. Later year, on 4 July 2003, it was released commercially in the United Kingdom as the first Bangladeshi film. In the same year on 14 August, it was recorded due to a 4-week long exhibition in Dhaka.[10] The film was re-released commercially on 29 July 2006 in Kolkata, India.[23]

After the initial screening at Cannes, the film got international press coverage for its positive portrayal of Bangladesh as well as its tolerant traditions. Due to its religious content the film was banned from public screening in the country by the Bangladesh Film Censor Board.[7][10][24] The ban also claimed that it provided a distorted image of the madrasa system in the sub-continent.[25] After a massive campaign against the ban was launched in the Bangladeshi media and on the Internet, there was pressure on the Bangladeshi Government to revoke the ban. Tareq and Catherine Masud brought a case against the ban in the Bangladesh Supreme Court, Appellate Division, and the decision in their favor was reversed.[10] As a result, the film was allowed to be released in Bangladesh in late 2002.

Channel Four, the UK-based public service television broadcasting company, bought the broadcasting rights from ICA, the UK distributor of the film. In July 2005, as the first Bangladeshi film it was on-air in UK television.[15] The film was later televised in Argentina on 26 September 2006, and in the United Kingdom on 20 December 2006.[26]

Medium	Rating/%	Critic(s)
AllMovie[27]		-
AlloCiné[28]		13
IMDb[29]		3,758
Metacritic[30]	75	14
Rotten Tomatoes[31]	89%	27

Matir Moina mainly received positive reviews from critics, viewers and film connoisseurs, who commented on the film's historical and social impact. The film received an average rating of 4/5 on the movie review website Allmovie.[27] The French film database AlloCiné has an average rating of 3.5/5 based on 13 reviews.[28] On the film review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 89% based on 27 reviews, with a rating average of 7.57/10. The site's critical consensus reads, it "has a kind of twofold eloquence."[31] Metacritic, which gave its reviews a weighted average rating, with the film scoring 75 based on 14 critics, including "generally favorable reviews".[30]

Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian said, "The film offers a valuable and independent engagement with Muslim history, quite different from the ugly fight-to-the-finish promoted elsewhere in the media, and constitutes a nuanced riposte both to the dogmatic verities of religion and also to a species of Islamophobia that assumes the Muslim world to be crudely monolithic. ..It is one of the films of the year."[32] According to The Washington Post's Ann Hornaday, the low-cost film captures the lyricism of life in Bangladesh's waterways and cities, some scenes reminiscent of Jean Renoir's 1951 classic Le Fleuve.[33] Ty Burr of The Boston Globe stated that the connection between personal, political and spiritual instability is revealed with the pure imagination of the autopsy.[34] American film critic Frank Scheck writes in The Hollywood Reporter, the producers' clear sympathy for the film's characters and close knowledge of its subject matter makes the film come alive. Michael O'Sullivan commented in a review of The Washington Post that The Clay Bird hits a number of beautiful and lazy trends about the human condition.[35] According to Eric Monder of Film Journal International, the film is somewhat restrained for its own drama, but at least for a contemporary audience, it sheds light on a significant part of world history. Marty Mapes of Movie Habit comments that the film is a good piece of armchair anthropology.[36] American film historian and critic Elias Savada said, "The Clay Bird is a incredibly humbling experience."[37] American writer and film critic Phil Hall stated in Film Threat, it a great film in Bangladesh. American journalist and historian Elliott Stein said, "The Clay Bird recalls the empathy for childhood's innocence and lust for living—as well as the visual rapture and naturalness—of Satyajit Ray's great Pather Panchali."[38] According to the BBC's Jamie Russell, Anu skillfully created an increasingly gentle portrait of Masud during his transition through childhood.[39] According to Sean Axmaker of Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the film is a timeless work with clear and elusive and almost historical features.[40] Jamal Malik, a professor of German Islamic Studies of Pakistani descent, said the story of Matir Moina is presented in a textual structure similar to European art cinema.[41] Indian filmmaker Aparna Sen praises the film.[42][43]

Tareque Masud was commemorated on Google Doodle on 6 December 2016, on his 72nd birthday. Where a iconic bird represents the film Matir Moina.[44][45]

On 16 June 2004, the film was released on DVD (only for Region 2) by its French producer, distributor and world sales representative mk2 under Warner Bros. Home Entertainment France.[55] VCD and DVD versions of the film was released in Bangladesh on 15 April 2005 from Laser Vision.[15] Which includes an additional two-hours documentary, featuring scenes, interviews and audience feedback. It is considered as the first interactive DVD in Bangladesh.[15]

The film was released in DVD version in late 2005 by its North American distributor Milestone Films.[56]