The Journal
Essays & Dispatches
Long reads on the films, filmmakers and movements of meaningful Indian cinema.
Apur Sansar (1959)
Apur Sansar (1959) is Satyajit Ray’s conclusion to the Apu Trilogy that takes a Calcutta writer through an accidental marriage, his wife’s death in childbirth and the years he spends away from his son, and ends with a return that it refuses to call a redemption.
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.
Ek Hota Vidushak (1992)
Ek Hota Vidushak (1992) is Jabbar Patel’s Marathi film about a folk artist (Vidushak) who rises from rural obscurity to fame and political power, only to lose his artistic soul and personal moorings in the process.
Paanch (2003)
Anurag Kashyap’s Paanch is a gritty, controversial 2003 crime drama—his directorial debut—about five reckless friends in a rock band whose lives spiral into violence, drugs, and murder, a film that remained unreleased due to censorship battles over its dark themes.
Tahaan (2008)
Tahaan (2008) is a Hindi drama film by Santosh Sivan about a young Kashmiri boy who embarks on a journey to recover his beloved donkey after it’s taken away to settle a family debt.
Elippathayam (1981)
Elippathayam, directed by Adoor Gopalakrishnan, is a 1981 film, that chronicles, with extraordinary restraint and formal control, the extinction of an entire social order through the fate of one thoroughly unremarkable man.