Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road) in 35mm

Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road) in 35mm

Selected by the Directors Branch.

Selected by the Directors Branch.

Tasked with creating illustrations for a new edition of Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay’s novel Pather Panchali, Satyajit Ray was so captivated by the story of the Roy family—father Horihor, mother Shorbojoya daughter Durga, baby brother Apu, and widowed aunt Indir—that he became a filmmaker in order to adapt it. The Roys share a tumbledown ancestral home on the rural outskirts of Calcutta (Kolkata), where a distant train’s smoke on the horizon offers a faint trace of the urban world. A timeless family saga, Pather Panchali was shot over three years and is still considered one of cinema’s greatest directorial debuts. 

DIRECTED/WRITTEN BY: Satyajit Ray. WITH: Kanu Banerjee, Karuna Banerjee, Uma Das Gupta, Subir Banerjee. 1955. 115 min. India. B&W. Bengali. 35mm. Restored by the Satyajit Ray Preservation Project through a collaboration of the Academy Film Archive, the Merchant-Ivory Foundation, The Film Foundation, and the Packard Humanities Institute. Print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive. 

Academy Museum film programming generously funded by the Richard Roth Foundation. 

Explore our current quarterly print Film Calendar and browse the archive.

Theater accessibility accommodations available upon request. Learn more about our accessibility initiatives.

Back to Main Series