Bharat Ratna Satyajit Ray directed 36 films, including feature films, documentaries and telly films. His first film, Pather Panchali released in 1955, won eleven international prizes, including Best Human Documentary at the Cannes Film Festival and an honorary Academy Award in 1992.

Regarded as one of the greatest auteurs of the 20th century cinema, Satyajit Ray had a global fan following.

Starting his career as a commercial artist, Ray was drawn into independent filmmaking after meeting French filmmaker Jean Renoir and viewing Vittorio De Sica’s Italian neorealist film Bicycle Thieves in 1948 during a visit to London.

He directed 36 films, including feature films, documentaries and telly films. He was also a fiction writer, publisher, illustrator, graphic designer and film critic.

His first film, Pather Panchali won eleven international prizes, including Best Human Documentary at the Cannes Film Festival and an honorary Academy Award in 1992.

Satyajit Ray’s ‘Pather Panchali’, considered one of the greatest films of all time released in Bengal on 26th August, 1955.

Hailed as one of the masterpieces of modern cinema worldwide, the film marked the debut of not only the director but also its lead cast who gained world recognition with the film and could not replicate the same stardom after this film.

Based on Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay’s 1929 Bengali novel of the same name, Pather Panchali rated as one of the best 100 films of all time by the Time Magazine in 2005.

The semi-autobiographical novel describes the maturation of Apu, a small boy in a Bengal village.

Ray was honoured with the Bharat Ratna in 1992 by the Government of India. Ray is best known for his cult flms Pather Panchali, Nayaka, Aranyer Din Ratri, Seemabaddhaa, Charulata and the Feluda series.