Calcutta 71

This is a film that clearly demonstrates that there is an Indian cinema beyond Bollywood and that it is not even new. In fact, Satyajit Ray had been filming Indian realism since the 1950s.

This is a difficult film to classify. If in essence it is a raw and realistic work, which denounces the misery of a city (and a country) where inequalities are glaring and deficiencies reach the level of mere survival, on the other, in its segmented structure, in the message that is sometimes revolutionary, it has echoes of nouvelle vague, especially after May 1968. There are brief influences from Godard and a freshness from the young protester of 1971, which clearly contrast with the usual cinematic language of the Indian subcontinent.

A beautiful film about a terrible reality.