Pather Panchali(1955)

Name: Pather Panchali
Director: Satyajit Ray
Released: 1955

dir. Satyajit Ray

Poverty through a child’s eyes, no lecture.

Where to watch: Criterion Channel (subscription)Letterboxd ↗

A poor Brahmin family in a Bengal village: a father who dreams of being a poet and cannot earn a living, a mother holding the household together, a mischievous older sister, Durga, and a small boy, Apu, who watches everything. Over a few seasons, the film follows their days, a train glimpsed through the fields, a monsoon, a death. It is the first of the Apu Trilogy, made on a tiny budget with first-time actors.

Why it’s here

The film looks at poverty through the eyes of a child and never lectures. What's punk is that it was made by a first-time director with borrowed money and non-professional cast, and it changed world cinema. What's pedagogical is the slowness: it teaches you to see a life carefully. It sits next to A Fine Balance and the other South Asian titles in the catalog, and Satyajit Ray is a core film-school name.

Where This Film Lives