Storyline

The film is a vivid record of a time when the country's one most important sector was pushed to gradual death. It is jute, ‘the golden fiber’ as it was once called, for it had fed millions in both farming and industrial sectors. Jute sector rose to its prominence in Bengal under the British rule. The farmers mastered the crafts of cultivating and processing the fiber while a new set of workers, jute-mill workers, emerged as an industrial force skilled in jute-mill operations. After Bangladesh gained independence in 1971, the whole sector was nationalized that hardly benefited the nation. But onslaughts hit hardest the industry in the 1980s to continue in the '90s and the later decade too. The donors' policy of strict retrenchment of the sector, which the Bangladesh government did not opposed to, resulted in the shutdown of the factories one after another and layoffs of thousands of workers. 'Siren', focusing on the closure of several jute mills at Khalishpur in Khulna, witnesses the hunger and uncertainty that the workers' families faced. The film records a time when future for these families only kept in store hunger and uncertainty that the workers' families faced. The film records a time when future for these families only kept in store joblessness, starvation, death, suicide and prostitution.