Days and Nights in the Forest

One of director Satyajit Ray’s greatest achievements begins with the deceptively easy grace of a buddy comedy—only to give way to darker moral shading. Seeking a weekend escape from the city, four friends from Kolkata embark on a driving trip to the countryside, where their urban entitlement and prejudices are gradually exposed. Among these young bachelors is the overconfident Ashim (Soumitra Chatterjee), who finds his self-assurance shaken by Aparna (the radiant Sharmila Tagore), an enigmatic young woman whose cool intellect conceals turbulent emotional depths. Filmed luminously amid the sun-dappled splendor of the woodlands of India’s Palamu region, DAYS AND NIGHTS IN THE FOREST deconstructs the masculine ego and India’s fraught class divisions with elegant complexity.

Starring Soumitra Chatterjee, Subhendu Chatterjee, Samit Bhanja