Top Bengali Films Streaming — Satyajit Ray Classics and Modern Bengali Cinema

Bengali cinema is where Indian film grew up. Satyajit Ray's Apu Trilogy — Pather Panchali (1955), Aparajito (1956) and Apur Sansar / The World of Apu (1959) — remains the most internationally celebrated run in Indian cinematic history, winning prizes at Cannes and Venice, and introducing the world to the quiet realist mode that directors from Abbas Kiarostami to Richard Linklater would later inherit. Ray's other masterpieces continue that tradition: Charulata (1964), arguably the most elegantly composed film ever made in India, and The Music Room / Jalsaghar (1958), a meditation on the decay of feudal aristocracy with an extraordinary central performance from Chhabi Biswas. Devi (1960) is his most challenging religious fable. Ritwik Ghatak's The Cloud-Capped Star / Meghe Dhaka Tara (1960) is the other pillar of Bengali parallel cinema — harsher, more political, less world-famous, but no less essential. Ghatak's A River Called Titas (1973) is also included here as one of his most formally ambitious works. Satyajit Ray's later films The Hero / Nayak (1966) and The Stranger / Agantuk (1991) show him continuing to evolve into his final years. The modern Bengali scene is represented here by Srijit Mukherji's Chotushkone, a four-directors anthology thriller that launched a new generation of commercial Bengali cinema, and Ek Je Chhilo Raja, a courtroom drama based on the Bhawal Sanyasi case. Rosogolla is a biopic of the sweet-maker Nabin Chandra Das. If you have never watched Bengali cinema, Pather Panchali is the only possible starting point; from there, any Ray film will reward you. Every film is streamable free in HD on CineFlixo.