The Journal
Essays & Dispatches
Long reads on the films, filmmakers and movements of meaningful Indian cinema.
Aparajito (1956)
The second film of Satyajit Ray’s Apu Trilogy follows a Brahmin boy from the ghats of Varanasi to a Calcutta printing press, tracing the cost his education exacts on the mother he leaves behind.
Ijaazat (1987)
Ijaazat (1987) is Gulzar’s exquisitely poetic Hindi musical romance about an estranged couple (Naseeruddin Shah and Rekha) who unexpectedly reunite in a railway station waiting room five years after their divorce, tenderly excavating memories of their failed marriage and the other woman (Anuradha Patel) whose presence still lingers between them.
Dooratwa (1978)
Dooratwa (1978), Buddhadev Dasgupta’s debut feature, is a spare and poetically rendered Bengali drama — adapted from a Sirshendu Mukhopadhyay short story — that examines marital estrangement when a Kolkata professor discovers his young wife is pregnant by another man, winning the National Film Award for Best Bengali Feature Film.
Sparsh (1980)
Sparsh (1980) is Sai Paranjape’s tender Hindi drama about a fiercely independent blind principal (Naseeruddin Shah) of a school for the blind and a withdrawn widow (Shabana Azmi) who volunteers at the school, exploring how physical disability, pride, and insecurity become emotional barriers to love and human connection.
Black Friday (2004)
Black Friday (2004) is Anurag Kashyap’s documentary-style Hindi film, adapted from S. Hussain Zaidi’s book, that reconstructs the investigation into the 1993 Bombay serial bombings through a sprawling mosaic of perpetrators, policemen, and bystanders, offering a searing, unsentimental account of how the attacks were planned, executed, and unravelled.
Teesri Kasam (1966)
Teesri Kasam (1966) is Basu Bhattacharya’s National Award-winning Hindi film, adapted from Phanishwarnath Renu’s story, about a naive bullock-cart driver who falls in love with a travelling nautanki dancer, a tender meditation on innocence, unfulfilled love, and the exploitation of folk performers in rural India.
Paroma (1985)
Paroma (1985) is Aparna Sen’s Bengali film about a conventional middle-class housewife whose affair with a younger photographer awakens her sense of self but brings social and personal turmoil, probing questions of female identity and desire within patriarchal society.