“The Ritual” has been one of my favorite discoveries from India, and had a similar impact on me as when watching “Pather Panchali” for the first time. The tragic story of a young woman who gets seduced by a teacher and excluded by society being told from a young boy´s perspective is a brilliant criticism of society and had been one of the greatest sensations in Indian Parallel cinema history. The importance of Kasaravalli for Kannada cinema is comparable to that of Ray for Bengali cinema, but despite being selected as the only Indian film among the 100 greatest works of world cinema by the French National Film Archieves in 2002 has the film been mainly ignored by critics outside of India and has still no international DVD release.