One of world cinema’s great directorial debuts, Pather Panchali not only announced the arrival of a new filmmaking talent, it was also credited by western critics with putting Indian cinema on the map.

Filmmaking in India had in fact been well established for decades; indeed, it celebrates its centenary this year. But those who saw Ray’s debut at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival were met with an entirely different proposition from Bollywood’s trademark musicals and melodramas: a delicately told human drama inspired by Jean Renoir (whom Ray had assisted on his 1951 India-set drama The River) and neorealist films like Bicycle Thieves (1948), which had bowled over the young Ray when he saw them during a stint in London.

Pather Panchali is an adaptation of a 1929 novel about a young boy, Apu, growing up in rural Bengal, where the abject poverty of his family does little to suppress his youthful inquisitiveness and awakening sensibilities. Ray followed Apu’s progress in two further films – Aparajito (1956) and The World of Apu (1959) – in which the maturing boy moves to Calcutta to take up studies and find his place in the adult world. The Apu trilogy remains Ray’s most famous achievement.

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