Once in a while, a film comes along that sweeps you off your feet. Anik Dutta’s Aparajito (The Undefeated, Bengali with English subtitles) is one such. Celebrating Satyajit Ray’s (1921-1992) centenary year, actually 101st year, it is not a biopic on his life, but a film on the making of a masterpiece. On how Satyajit Ray made his first film Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road) in 1955, that catapulted him and Indian cinema into the international league, by winning the Best Human Document Award at the Cannes Film Festival, and screening at the influential Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York. It is a charming primer, a great entry point into the work of a master of world cinema: Ray directed about 37 films, many world classics, including fiction, documentaries, TV films, children’s films and shorts.

Aparajito is a familiar, fictionalised story: the older generation will be awash in nostalgia, but it certainly speaks to the younger generation too, as practically every other youngster dreams of making a film some day. The film opened in all-India theatres on May 13, and is available on bookmyshow. Dutta’s earlier acclaimed work, sometimes flecked with satire and political comment, includes the horror-comedy Bhooter Bhabishyat, Ashchorjyo Prodeep, Meghnadbodh Rohoshyo, Bhobishyoter Bhoot (which was banned) and Borunbabur Bondhu. Aparajito chronicles Ray’s struggles to make a film outside Bombay’s stifling mainstream template, without a hero-heroine, romance or song and dance; about two kids, Apu and Durga, and their family, in a Bengali village, their joys and sorrows. We know Ray was a Renaissance man, skilled in direction, writing dialogues, doing illustrations, storyboarding, posters, inventing fonts, composing music, and more. Here we see how Ray started out in advertising, started a film society, and went to London on work, where he saw 99 films in six months. Deeply influenced by Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves and Italian neo-realism, he conceived Pather Panchali as a film on the return journey by ship. There are charming and funny insights, as to how Ray, a bit of an anglicised snob, had never read Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay’s popular novel Pather Panchali, until his boss commissioned him to design the cover for a new edition. How legendary cinematographer Subrata Mitra had never held a moving camera before this film. And how, thanks to the English title, the Bengal chief minister sanctioned PWD funds meant for the Siliguri highway, for a film called Song of the Little Road!