Holy water from a temple is found to be contaminated in this decent adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s play, situated within Ray’s cultural milieu as this straightforwardly-told drama sees science and religion cross swords.
Rosi’s eye-opening first-ever documentary could be his finest—he plants his camera on a boat along the holy Ganges River, capturing the assortment of sights, sounds and fervent opinions, as it meditates on the cycles of life and death.
As zany a film you can find in Indian Parallel Cinema, Sen’s work about an uncompassionate city bureaucrat who goes on a perspective-changing hunting trip is highly-expressive in form and film language.
A gentle, heartfelt and beautifully-shot piece about why movies inspire us, from the point-of-view of an inquisitive village boy who befriends a 35mm film projectionist.
Featuring one of A.R. Rahman’s most outstanding songs (the title track), this is a generally solid work from Mani Ratnam about the complicated dynamics of family, with parts of it set against the context of Sri Lankan militancy.
Still banned theatrically in close-minded Singapore, this rousing, emotional work from Mani Ratnam about the conflicts stirred between the Hindus and Muslims is essential viewing for anyone who wants to understand why we must never bear religious and racial hatred.
Smoke from coal ovens is a recurrent visual motif of class struggle in Sen’s excellent take on the material poverty of Calcutta’s poor, sprinkled with bouts of indelible dreamlike scenes.
Sen at his thought-provoking best, this highly-layered meta-filmic behind-the-scenes drama sees a film crew enter a poor village to make a movie about the 1943 Bengal famine, only to find it increasingly difficult to engage with the people, traditions, history and filmmaking itself.
Sen channels the unorthodoxy of Godard in this fiercely political docufiction about a Marxist-leaning radical tasked to hide in a middle-class woman’s luxury apartment.
A con-man who pretends to be an all-powerful spiritual guru is at the centre of Ray’s modest if stinging social commentary on the naivety of succumbing to blind faith.
Eternality Tan 