Pather Panchali

One of the most influential filmmakers with one of the most beautiful feature debuts in film history: Satyajit Ray's trilogy opener ›Pather Panchali‹.

Desperation, abject poverty and hunger, but also technology that points to a better future and art as salvation: ›Pather Panchali‹ tells the story of a family living in Bengal at the beginning of the 1920s. The advances of modernity still seem far away. While the father tries in vain to earn money as a poet, his wife has to take care of the family by herself. The two siblings Durga and Apu, on the other hand, nurture their dreams. When the father moves to the city and Durga falls seriously ill, the situation becomes increasingly hopeless. ›Pather Panchali‹ is one of the important works of Indian cinema and received a prize in Mannheim in 1957. "Not to have seen the cinema of Satyajit Ray means existing in the world without seeing the sun or the moon." (Akira Kurosawa)

Director