‘Aranyer Din Ratri’ by Satyajit Ray to Be Showcased at Cannes 2025

Satyajit Ray’s celebrated film Aranyer Din Ratri will be featured in the Cannes Classics section at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival.

Following the 2022 screening of Pratidwandi, this marks another major Ray classic making its way to the prestigious French festival. Released in 1970, the Bengali-language film features an ensemble cast including Soumitra Chatterjee, Sharmila Tagore, Subhendu Chatterjee, Rabi Ghosh, Kaberi Bose, Simi Garewal, Samit Bhanja, and Aparna Sen.

The film, still revered by cinephiles, will have a special screening attended by Sharmila Tagore, who portrayed the poised and intellectual character Aparna. Like Pratidwandi, Aranyer Din Ratri is adapted from a story by renowned Bengali writer Sunil Gangopadhyay.

Notably, the film was previously nominated for the Golden Bear at the 20th Berlin International Film Festival and has now been restored in 4K. Its producer, Purnima Dutta, who initially planned to be present at Cannes, has opted to stay back in light of current Indo-Pak tensions, expressing both pride in the recognition and hope that Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne may be featured in future editions. Shivendra Singh Dungarpur from the Film Heritage Foundation will accompany Tagore at the event.

The Cannes Classics segment this year also includes notable screenings such as Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush to commemorate its centenary, a 25th-anniversary showing of Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Amores Perros with the director in attendance, and a 50th-anniversary celebration of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Director Quentin Tarantino will appear as the guest of honour, paying tribute to George Sherman, famed for his low-budget Westerns.