Satyajit Ray

One of the greatest moments in Ray's filmography, based on a novel by the acclaimed thinker and Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore, The Lonely Wife is like a miniature. The fragile narrative of a marriage in peril and a woman tentatively asserting her own voice. — At the end of the 19th century, Charulata spends many hours alone while her husband, Bupati, devotes all his time to his newly founded newspaper. Bupati asks his writer cousin to keep Charulata company every day and motivate her to write a story to unleash her writing talent. The two spend many hours together and inevitably a strong feeling is born between them. — Best Director Award | Berlin Film Festival | 1965

Ray's love of detective fiction led him to invent Detective Feluda, the Indian Sherlock Holmes, the protagonist of a series of short stories by the director. This is his second appearance in his filmography, a clever and highly entertaining whodunnit. — Detective Feluda is on holiday in the holy city of Varanasi with his assistant, Tapesh, and a mystery writer. There, he meets the Goshal family, who immediately hire him to solve the mystery of the disappearance of the golden statuette of the God Ganesha, a family heirloom given to their ancestor by the King of Nepal.

In this comedy that artfully balances between farce and social satire, Ray criticises religious charlatanism and comments cheekily on India's identity struggle between tradition and modernity. — Birinci Baba claims that for many years, he has been closely related to Jesus Christ and the Buddha, and that it was he who taught Einstein the equation E=mc2. His aim is to attract older people who are blinded by religious faith, such as the lawyer Mitra, who is in deep mourning after the death of his wife. His daughter Mitra, who is disappointed in her lover, decides to take revenge on him by telling him that she will become Baba's follower.

With the city of Kolkata as his protagonist, Ray builds a sensitive human drama paying special attention to the details of everyday life of the working class. A story full of hope but also a resounding commentary on the identity of the modern woman in India. — A humble bank employee in Kolkata, struggles to support his family. Breaking tradition, his wife decides to seek employment and this is opposed by her husband's conservative family as they believe it undermines the traditional role of the man as the main provider and breadwinner of the household. She will be quickly promoted, while her husband will lose his job, leaving her to provide financial support for the family. — Best Director Award | Berlin Film Festival | 1964

Satyajit Ray explores the agony of unrequited desire and lost love in an emotionally layered chamber drama that is both affecting and uniquely ephemeral because of its short duration. A little firework of memory and emotion. — A writer travels to a small village for the purpose of his new screenplay. When his car breaks down, a tea farmer offers to put him up in his house for one night. There, much to his surprise, he meets the farmer's wife, with whom he had an affair many years ago. Their unexpected meeting keeps him awake at night and his thoughts travel back to the day of their separation, rekindling his desire to be with her again. — Official Selection | Venice Film Festival | 1965

Ray performs a detailed psychogram of celebrity, an insightful meditation on art, fame and the disappointments that accompany it, starring Utham Kumar, one of Bengal's biggest film stars in a rare moment of interpretive introspection. — Aridam, a famous film star, travels by train from Kolkata to Delhi, where all the passengers recognise him and try to approach him. However, Aditi, a young journalist in a women's magazine, feels contempt for the publicity he enjoys. Wanting to write an article for her magazine, she approaches him in order to learn about the void all that publicity leaves in a man's soul. — Special Mention for Best Film | Berlin Film Festival | 1966