Bulbul Can Sing

Bulbul lives in Kalardiya village near Chaygaon with her best friends Bonny and Sumu. All three are coming of age and discovering who they are, but who they want to be and who the community expects them to be are different things, and they find themselves at odds with the village's moral codes. Bulbul feels the first flickers of attraction to a boy, Sumu is bullied for not acting like a conventional man, and Bonny finds the community's pressures unbearable. As fear and doubt press on all three, Bulbul has to find her own voice and sing.

As in Village Rockstars, Rima Das wrote, directed, shot and edited the film herself in her home village of Kalardiya, using a cast of local people.

Bulbul Can Sing was screened in the Contemporary World Cinema section of the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival and won the National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Assamese at the 66th National Film Awards. Deborah Young of The Hollywood Reporter called it quietly insightful with a pleasing simplicity and realism, and Wendy Ide of Screen described it as a heartfelt, acutely honest portrait of rural Indian adolescence. Anirudh Bhattacharyya of Outlook felt that Das had surpassed the expectations set by Village Rockstars, and Aswathy Gopalakrishnan praised its subtle take on feminism and patriarchy.

In Rima Das's filmography, Bulbul Can Sing came after Man with the Binoculars (2016) and Village Rockstars (2017) and was followed by Tora's Husband (2022) and Village Rockstars 2 (2024).