ray: I can watch Satyajit Ray’s movie in peace. There is a kind of mysticism in his cinema: Shoojit Sircar | Bengali Cinema News

After much deliberation, the 27th Kolkata International Film Festival is in full swing. On Tuesday, the first day of the festival, a large number of moviegoers in the city braved the heat wave to watch films in the Nandan area. By late afternoon, there was a long queue to see Julia Ducournau’s Titanium, the film that won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival last year. The day also saw the inauguration of tribute exhibitions, including the centenary tribute to Satyajit Ray. Later, Shoojit Sarkar presented the Satyajit Ray Memorial Lecture: Boundless Ray.

Elaborating on his introduction to Ray’s movies, Shoojit said, “As a young boy, I was so bored watching Pather Panchali that I dozed off in the movie theater. It was in adulthood, when I started working in the theater, that I understood his magnanimity as a filmmaker. Now the entrance to my office in Mumbai is decorated with Ray’s movie posters. Whenever someone asks me if Ray was a Bengali filmmaker, I correct him by saying, “He was an international filmmaker”.

Shoojit also reflected on the essence of Ray’s films. “I find it funny when people say his films are difficult. I find his films peaceful. There are positives in his films. Meanwhile, I find car chases on movies traumatic. I find it hard to see how a policeman’s muscles rip his shirt off,” he said.

In the evening, Sardar Udham from Shoojit was screened at Nandan. Before the screening, he attended a press conference.