Шиму сбежала из деревни ещё ребёнком, когда её мачеха пригрозила выдать её за мужчину средних лет. Теперь ей 23, и она живет в столице, трудится по мучительному графику за ничтожную зарплату на текстильной фабрике, пока её муж безуспешно ищет работу.
10-year-old Jamal loves his carefree life with his mum in rural Bangladesh, until the day his childhood friend and playmate is forced to become a child bride. Isolated and lost, Jamal finds the world a harsh reality when his hopes of getting new friends and attending school collide with his mother's past.
Roya is a middle-class Muslim woman that struggles to find herself in the sprawl of urban Bangladesh. When she discovers that she will be replaced by a younger actor for the role of Nandini —a central character of Rabindranath Tagore’s political play Red Oleanders —she battles to reconstruct the part, reclaiming her identity and sexuality in the process. As she sets the play in a modern day ready-made garment factory in Dhaka, her journey to establish her individuality is juxtaposed with the journey of her housemaid Moyna, who later joins the industrial workforce.
