Nagarik: The Screenplays, Volume 1

The journey of Ritwik Ghatak’s Nagarik from the shooting of the film to its release was an extremely chequered one. While it was shot in 1952, three years before Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali, it was released only twenty-five years later, in 1977, after Ghatak’s death in 1976. Set in Calcutta in the immediate aftermath of the Partition, the film chronicles the struggles of a family from North Bengal as they desperately strive to survive in a metropolis that is unable to address the necessi...