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When Satyajit Ray’s 1970 film Aranyer Din Ratri (Days and Nights in the Forest) returned to Cannes this May, it was far from a faded relic. Restored by Shivendra Singh Dungarpur and the Film Heritage Foundation, the film, in ravishingly revived form, was selected for the prestigious Cannes Classics section as a testament to Ray’s enduring influence on world cinema through classics like 1955’s Panther Panchali, which is the first film in the director’s celebrated Apu Trilogy.

To mark the occasion, The Hollywood Reporter India spoke with three individuals deeply touched by the film and its creator: legendary Indian actress Sharmila Tagore, a frequent Ray collaborator; Wes Anderson, whose work bears Ray’s influence; and Dungarpur, whose archival work revived the film.

“I watched [Ray’s 1961 title] Teen Kanya first, just because it happened to be available in a video store in Texas,” Anderson recalls. “That’s how I became interested in his films.

A six-year restoration journey spearheaded by filmmaker Wes Anderson has culminated in Satyajit Ray’s 1970 masterpiece “Aranyer Din Ratri” (“Days and Nights in the Forest”) securing a slot at Cannes Classics.

The restoration project began in 2019 when Anderson, through his position on the board of Martin Scorsese’s The Film Foundation, initiated discussions about preserving the film. “The Grand Budapest Hotel” director’s passion for Ray’s work drove the collaborative effort between The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project, Film Heritage Foundation, Janus Films and The Criterion Collection, with funding provided by the Golden Globe Foundation.

“Anything signed by Satyajit Ray must be cherished and preserved; but the nearly-forgotten ‘Days and Nights in the Forest’ is a special/particular gem,” Anderson said. “Made in 1970. Modern and novelistic. Ray worked in terrain perhaps more familiar to Cassavetes. A clash/negotiation between castes and sexes. Urbans and rurals. Selfish men and...

Cannes 2025: When & Where to Watch – Plus Indian Celebs You Can’t Miss(Photo Credit –Instagram)

The globe’s most glamorous movie festival is here! The 78th Cannes Film Festival started on May 13, 2025, and it’s already making waves. From dramatic red carpet entrances to massive film launches, this year’s event is going to be unforgettable, and Indian stars are all set to leave their stamp on the world stage.

Where To Watch Cannes 2025 Live & Important Dates

The festival will take place from May 13 to May 24, in Cannes, France, and fans all over the globe can witness every second live. As per Zee News, the opening ceremony will commence at 7:15 Pm local time (10:45 Pm Ist) on May 13 and include the presentation of the Palme d’Or d’Honneur.

Here’s where you can watch it live:

Festival de Cannes official YouTube channel Mubi FilmyDoo (starts 2:30 Pm...

Quentin Tarantino will be the guest of honour at Cannes Classics, the repertory cinema strand of Cannes Film Festival’s Official Selection.

Tarantino will present two western films by George Sherman – 1949’s Red Canyon, and 1950’s Comanche Territory – and will take part in a discussion with critic and filmmaker Elvis Mitchell.

Scroll down for the full selection of Cannes Classics titles

The Classics lineup includes the Cannes pre-opening film, a 4K restoration of Charlie Chaplin’s 1925 The Gold Rush, restored by the L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory at the Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna. Mk2 Films is arranging a worldwide re-release of the...

Quentin Tarantino will be guest of honor of Cannes Classics this year with a special tribute devoted to late low-budget westerns director George Sherman.

The Cannes regular, who won the Palme d’Or winner for Pulp Fiction and President of the Jury in 2004, will share his passion for Sherman’s work with screenings of two of his westerns made for Universal Pictures – Red Canyon and Comanche Territory – in one of his most creative periods.

Tarantino will participate in a conversation about Sherman moderated by critic and documentary filmmaker Elvis Mitchell.

Other highlights of the program devoted to classic cinema include a pre-opening screening of Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush, to mark the centenary of its making, as well as a 25th anniversary screening of Amores perros by Alejandro G. Iñárritu, in the presence of director, and the 50th anniversary screening of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

Shia Labeouf...

As we have mentioned many times before, the documentary is currently experiencing one of its golden periods, with the fact that reality goes beyond any script becoming quite obvious throughout the plethora of entries we have been seeing during that last few years. Furthermore, as a number of courageous filmmakers shed light to issues that are dangerous to depict (to say the least) or even hard to watch, the quality of the category continues to improve. Add to that the biographical ones, the ones that present real but relatively unknown sides of each country’s society and you have the majority of reasons for what we mentioned in the beginning.

Without further ado, here are the 15 Best Asian Documentaries of 2024, in reverse order. Some may have premiered in 2023, but since they mostly circulated in 2024, we decided to include them.

15. Parama: A Journey With Aparna Sen Aparna Sen © Mayaleela Films

“When actors become mainstream stars,...

Indian cinema icon Sharmila Tagore embraces a challenging role in Suman Ghosh’s “The Ancient” (Puratawn), which has its India premiere at the Mami Mumbai Film Festival. The veteran actor portrays a woman grappling with memory loss in director Suman Ghosh’s Bengali-language drama.

In “The Ancient,” Ritika (Rituparna Sengupta) and her husband Rajeev (Indraneil Sengupta) return to her ancestral home in West Bengal to celebrate her mother’s (Tagore) 80th birthday. Upon arrival, Ritika discovers her mother’s cognitive decline, forcing her to confront a new reality. As Ritika grapples with this revelation, she embarks on a journey of acceptance, coming to terms with her mother’s irreversible condition.

Ghosh is a festival veteran with 2011’s “Nobel Thief,” 2012’s “Uncle Shyamal Turns off the Lights,” 2015’s “Peace Haven,” 2016’s “Mi Amor,” 2019’s “Aadhaar” and 2023’s “Scavenger of Dreams” all premiering at Busan and 2024 documentary “Parama: A Journey with Aparna Sen” at Rotterdam.

India's “renaissance woman” Aparna Sen – actress, director, producer, fighter for women's right, diversity and ethnic & religious minorities – whose career in the film business spans over six decades, was presented with the Red Lotus Lifetime Achievement Award 2024 in Vienna. The filmmaker was unfortunately not able to fly over to recieve it, and the award was presented to the winner through the German film critic and editor of the film magazine Shomingeki, Rüdiger Tomczak.

Parama: A Journey With Aparna Sen screened at Red Lotus Asian Film Festival Vienna

Only a few months ago, Sumah Ghosh's documentary “Parama: A Journey With Aparna Sen” about the Indian helmer celebrated its world premiere in the Cinema Regained strand of IFFR, and it was only logical to include it in the repertoire of Red Lotus Asian Film Festival. It is a film that gives a deep insight into the life and work of one of the...

Prolific filmmaker Suman Ghosh has unveiled the first look for his new film “Puratawn” (“Ancient”), starring veteran Indian actor Sharmila Tagore.

Tagore takes on the role of a matriarch grappling with the challenges of aging. As her 80th birthday is celebrated by her daughter and son-in-law at the ancestral house, the unfolding events over the next week become the focal point of the narrative, delving into the complexities that shape their collective journey.

Rituparna Sengupta’s Bhavna Aaj O Kal (“Datta”) is producing the film, which is seeking a sales agent at the Berlin Film Festival’s European Film Market.

Ghosh is a festival veteran with 2011’s “Nobel Thief,” 2012’s “Uncle Shyamal Turns off the Lights,” 2015’s “Peace Haven,” 2016’s “Mi Amor,” 2019’s “Aadhaar” and 2023’s “Scavenger of Dreams” all premiering at Busan and 2024 documentary “Parama: A Journey with Aparna Sen” at Rotterdam. He scored a major commercial hit with “Kabuliwala,...

Indian actor Soumitra Chatterjee, best known internationally for his long association with Oscar-winning filmmaker Satyajit Ray, died on Sunday in Kolkata after contracting coronavirus. He was 85.

Chatterjee was born in Calcutta in 1935. While at university he developed an interest in theater and was subsequently mentored by Sisir Bhaduri, a doyen in the field. He pursued an acting career in cinema while working as an announcer with All India Radio.

Chatterjee’s film debut, “The World of Apu,” (1959) was the third part of Ray’s celebrated Apu Trilogy that began with Cannes-winner “Pather Panchali” in 1955 and continued with Venice-winner “Aparajito” in 1956. The film began a fruitful association with Ray over the years that included “The Goddess” (1960), “Three Daughters” (1961), “The Expedition” (1962), “Charulata” (1964), “Days and Nights in the Forest” (1970), “Distant Thunder” (1973), “The Golden Fortress” (1974), “The Elephant God” (1979), “The Home and the World” (1984) and “Branches of the Tree” (1990).

Chatterjee also worked with the other greats of Bengali-language cinema,...

10. Agantuk

Ray’s last film , based on a short story “Atithi” written by him. The film defines the meaning and the value of relationship on the backdrop of an ever changing social spectrum and questions the effect of the huge technological growth on human civilization. Utpal Dutt gives a superlative performance as the protagonist.

9. Shatranj Ke Khilari

Ray’s one and only full length Hindi feature film, based on the short story of Munshi Premchand. The film is set on the back drop of Indian Rebellion of 1857 and features some terrific performances from the actors Amjad Khan and Sanjeev Kumar.

8. Nayak

“Nayak” is the story of a matinee idol and Ray’s attempt to reveal the darker elements of his mind in a long-distance train journey. Uttam Kumar and Sharmila Tagore give some brilliant performances in the movie.

7. Apur Sansar

The...

Last night at the closing night of the The Bagri Foundation London Indian Film Festival the final tally of awards throughout the festival came to four gongs. Recipients included acclaimed Indian actress Sharmila Tagore (Apur Sansar -1959), Days and Nights in The Forest – 1970), director Shekhar Kapur (Mr India – 1987), Bandit Queen – 1994) & the Oscar winning Elizabeth films, and also winners of this year’s Satyajit Ray short film award and Liff Audience Award for best film.

• Icon Awards© for outstanding contribution to world cinema from Sun Mark Ltd went to Shekhar Kapur, and Sharmila Tagore.

• Satyajit Ray Short Film Award in association with the Bagri Foundation went to Mochi (The Cobbler), by Saqib Pandor

• Liff Audience Award went to Song of Lahore, by Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy and Andy Schocken

The awards included the festival’s rarely presented Icon Award© for outstanding contribution to Indian and world cinema, which was won by Bengali actress Sharmila Tagore,...

A portrait of Satyajit Ray by Rishiraj Sahoo | Source: Wikimedia commons

Let’s start to play a game here – What is common between the 9 Bengali films listed below:

1 – Antaheen (2009, dir: Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury) advertised that this was the first film after Satyajit Ray’s Aranyer Din Ratri where Aparna Sen and Sharmila Tagore acted together. It went further stating that even the Ray masterpiece didn’t have the two pitted against each other in the same frame as this film did.

2 – Abar Aranye (2003, dir: Goutam Ghose) took three of the four characters of Aranyer Din Ratri to the forest of Dooars on a sequel train at a time when the DVD, CD version of the Ray original was not readily available.

3 – Aborto (2013, dir: Arindam Sil) flaunts that all the characters of the film have the same names as the different major characters in the master’s film oeuvre.

4 – Charulata 2011 (2012, dir:...

His greatest films have an ability to depict realistic situations, and remain alive to both their political and aesthetic dimensions

"Not to have seen the cinema of Ray means existing in the world without seeing the sun or the moon," said Akira Kurosawa. Well, now's your chance. Over the next few weeks, visitors to the British Film Institute will be able to watch some of Satyajit Ray's best work: Days and Nights in the Forest, The Chess Players, Company Limited, The Home and The World. What makes them so good? Partly his collective of collaborators: extraordinary actors such as Soumitra Chatterjee and Sharmila Tagore, the cinematographer Subrata Mitra. But his greatest films are marked by an ability to depict realistic situations – the hopelessness of a graduate's job hunt, say, or the hardships of life in a Bengali village – and remain alive to both their political and aesthetic dimensions. Ray...

He was a giant in India, but he also dominated world cinema – which is why it's fitting for the BFI to pay tribute to him

A cinema hall in August … less the start of a sentence than an oxymoron, I know. Still, let me offer some advice for fellow refugees from the sun: if you are ambling around London one evening over the next couple of months, you would do well to head over to the South Bank, where the British Film Institute is showing the complete works of one of the greatest directors: Satyajit Ray.

Some of my most enduring cinematic memories I owe to Ray. Channel 4 showed a late-night season of his work when I was starting secondary school and my parents, never exactly authoritarian when it came to policing bedtime, let me stay up and watch with them. Perhaps they considered this extracurricular education. Like Ray,...

Sharmila Tagore has been honoured with a Doctorate of Arts from Edinburgh Napier University, UK for her contributions towards Indian cinema. The 67 year old veteran actress has the distinction of being a household name both in Hindi and Bengali cinema, a rare achievement which not many have managed to secure. Ms Tagore was awarded with her doctorate on 25 October 2012 in the presence of around 1000 students during the university’s autumn graduation ceremonies. She expressed her gratitude to the university for being presented with this prestigious award in a public statement. “It is indeed a privilege to be conferred an Honorary Degree by Edinburgh Napier University. It recognizes the significant influence of Indian Cinema on the global cultural arena and the small role that I have played in its history. As we celebrate a hundred years of Indian Cinema, this is both a happy and humbling moment.”

Edinburgh Napier University has...

Mumbai, April 4: Filmmaker Sujoy Ghosh, who is planning a sequel to "Kahaani", is first set to work on a project that he says will "definitely" have Amitabh Bachchan and Vidya Balan in it.

Both actors form an intrinsic part of "Kahaani". While Big B sang "Ekla chalo re", Vidya played the lead in the movie, and has earned appreciation galore for her portrayal of a woman in search of her missing husband.

After "Kahaani", Ghosh intends to move to Bengali literature. He will be filming an adaptation of Bengali novelist Sunil Gangopadhyay's "Aranyer Din Ratri" with Vidya and Amitabh playing stellar roles.

"I can't see myself.

Filmmaker Sujoy Ghosh, who is planning a sequel to Kahaani is first set to work on a project that he says will definitely have Amitabh Bachchan and Vidya Balan in it.Both actors form an intrinsic part of Kahaani. While Big B sang Ekla chalo re, Vidya played the lead in the movie, and has earned appreciation galore for her portrayal of a woman in search of her missing husband.After Kahaani, Ghosh intends to move to Bengali literature. He will be filming an adaptation of Bengali novelist Sunil Gangopadhyay.s Aranyer Din Ratri with Vidya and Amitabh playing stellar roles..I can.t see myself making any films without them. Aranyer Din Ratri is a deep novel. I want to take my cinema beyond Kahaani now,. said Ghosh.The novel had been first filmed by Satyajit Ray in 1970.Ghosh is content with the response to Kahaani, and wants to...

<div>Legendary Bengali actor Soumitra Chatterjee, who has portrayed a versatile range of lead characters in films by Satyajit Ray, has been selected for India.s highest film honour - the Dadasaheb Phalke Award for 2012.</div><div></div><div>Confirming the news, Chatterjee told us that he was extremely happy at the honour.</div><div></div><div>.I am extremely happy. Till this evening I had not thought of this award. But after I got the news I am extremely happy,. Chatterjee said.</div><div></div><div>Chatterjee, one of India.s most talented actors, made his debut in 1959 with Ray.s super-hit movie .Apur Sansar.. The film gave him the much needed platform, and he never looked back.</div><div></div><div>Chatterjee soon became Ray.s favourite, and became the lead actor of most of the movie maker.s classics including Sonar Kella, Charulata and Ghare Baire.</div><div></div><div>Chatterjee.s association with Ray is often compared with the chemistry between famous actor-director duos of the world...

Penelope Ann Miller, The Artist Best Picture: The Artist Best Foreign-Language Film: Incendies Best Director: Martin Scorsese for Hugo Best Actor: Brad Pitt for Moneyball Best Actress: Michelle Williams for My Week with Marilyn Best Supporting Actor: Albert Brooks for Drive Best Supporting Actress: Melissa McCarthy for Bridesmaids Best Ensemble Cast: Carnage Best Screenplay: Steven Zaillian, Aaron Sorkin and Stan Chervin for Moneyball Best Cinematography: Emmanuel Lubezki for The Tree of Life Best Documentary: Project Nim Best Animated Film: Rango Best Film Editing (awarded in memory of Karen Schmeer): Christian Marclay for The Clock Best New Filmmaker (awarded in memory of David Brudnoy): Sean Durkin for Martha Marcy May Marlene Best Use of Music in a Film (tie): Drive and The Artist Best Film Series All Roads Lead to Nowhere The Films of Monte Hellman (Hfa) American Punk (Hfa) The Complete Henri-Georges Clouzot (Hfa) Noir Nights (ArtsEmerson...

Florence, Oct 21 – The Satyajit Ray classic ‘Aranyer Din Ratri’ will be this year’s highlight at River to River, Italy’s only festival of Indian cinema that is celebrating its 10th anniversary.

Four films by India’s master filmmaker – ‘Shatranj Ke Khiladi’, ‘Jalsaghar’, ‘Charulala’ being the other three – will be screened in the retrospective section at the weeklong festival that opens in Florence Dec 3.

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To celebrate its 20th Anniversary, it appears as though the Tiff Cinematheque is set to pull out all the stops.

According to Criterion, the Tiff, formerly known as the Cinematheque Ontario, will be bringing out a rather superb and cartoonishly awesome summer schedule, that will include films ranging from Kurosawa pieces, to films from Pier Paolo Pasolini. Other films include a month long series dedicated to James Mason, Eric Rohmer’s Six Moral Tales, a tribute to Robin Wood, and most interesting, a retrospective on the works of one Catherine Breillat.

Personally, while the Kurosawa, Pasolini, and Rohmer collections sound amazing, the Breillat series is ultimately the collective that I am most interested in. Ranging from films like the brilliant Fat Girl, to the superb and underrated Anatomy of Hell, these are some of the most interesting and under seen pieces of cinema of recent memory, and are more than...