A young woman, who works to raise her middle class family, cannot return from work one night. This causes a host of concerns at home, causing their night-long search all over town.
A film that delves into the crisis arising from economic and moral limitations that exist in society and there is also place for hope, the hidden force behind the despair.
Mrinal Sen was born on May 14, 1923, in the town of Faridpur, now in Bangladesh. After finishing his high school there, he left home to come to Calcutta for studying physics. During his student days, he got involved with the cultural wing of the Communist party. Though he never became a member of the party, his association with the Indian Peoples Theatre Association brought him close to a number of like-minded cultural people.
His interest in films started after he stumbled upon a book on film aesthetics. However his interest remained mostly intellectual, and he was forced to take up a job of a medical representative, which took him away from Calcutta. This did not last very long, and he came back to the city and eventually took a job of an audio technician in a Calcutta film studio, which was the beginning of his film carrier.
Mrinal Sen made his first feature film in 1953, which he soon tried to forget. His next film, Neel Akasher Nichey (Under the Blue Sky), earned… read more
Life is but a series of relentless repetitions and daily routines on which survival hinges, and the slight disturbance to this ritual could lead to painful, tragic consequences. And the point of cinema? To highlight the absurd fragility of the dependence that we have with one another for survival.
"I was moved by a testimony yesterday: my scriptwriter told me that the wife of one of his friends, a school-teacher, said to him after the screening: 'We knew of the existence of women's liberation movements in Indian society, the fact that various reforms in that direction have already been made, that we're enjoying a few privileges our ancestors would never have dreamed of, but it's the first time in my life that I've seen, in this film, that an Indian woman could command so much respect. I'm a woman, but I've never felt all the respect that the woman in this film could enjoy, and I'm very proud of her.' This is the kind of reaction that fills me with pride."—Mrinal Sen, 1980
