A Bengali film celebrating the life of Satyajit Ray opened a pan-India festival on the master on Monday.
The teaser of Aparajito, directed by Anik Datta, has been generating a generous amount of traction on social media because of the striking resemblance in appearance between Jeetu Kamal, who plays the protagonist, and Ray.
The film releases commercially in theatres on May 13.
The three-day festival is being organised by the National Museum of Indian Cinema, under the aegis of the Union ministry of information and broadcasting, to commemorate 100 years of Ray, who was born on May 2, 1921.
The festival began at the National Museum of Indian Cinema in Mumbai with the red carpet and inauguration of the Satyajit Ray gallery. Filmmaker Shyam Benegal inaugurated the museum.
The inauguration was followed by the screening of Aparajito.
The director, the lead actor and producer Firdausal Hasan attended the screening.
The film is a tribute to the legend and the trailer offers glimpses of the road to his debut film, Pather Panchali.
In the new film, director Aparajito Ray is making his first film called Pather Padaboli.
“The film is like a detailed behind-the-scenes of Pather Panchali. Not only the making of the film, but also an account of Ray’s foray into the medium and what he wanted his first project to be like,” said director Datta.
Producer Hasan is banking on the film to do well at a time films from the southern stable are ruling the roost in Kolkata theatres.
“It is a befitting tribute to Ray in his centenary year,” said Hasan. The film was shot for almost a year. Before that another year was spent on research and script.
It has largely been shot in Kolkata and parts of Birbhum, Hooghly and West Burdwan.
As part of the festival, a bouquet of Ray films will be simultaneously shown at auditoriums in New Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Bangalore and Pune till Wednesday.
In Kolkata, the venue is an auditorium in the Indian Museum.
Agantuk, Ghare Baire, Sonar Kella and Ganashatru are among the Ray films that are on the list.
So are Music of Satyajit Ray, directed by Utpalendu Chakraborty, and Nemai Ghosh — A Ray of Light, directed by Anirban Mitra and Tirtho Dasgupta.