Pather Panchali Pather Panchali Pather Panchali ( "", "Song of the Little Road") is a 1955 Indian Bengali-language drama film written and directed by Satyajit Ray and produced by the Government of West Bengal. It is based on Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay's 1929 Bengali novel of the same name and is Ray's directorial debut. It features Subir Banerjee, Kanu Banerjee, Karuna Banerjee, Uma Dasgupta and Chunibala Devi. The first film in the Apu trilogy, "Pather Panchali" depicts the childhood of the protagonist Apu (Subir Banerjee) and his elder sister Durga (Uma Dasgupta) and the harsh village life of their poor family. Production was interrupted
Pather Panchali Pauline Kael wrote, "Beautiful, sometimes funny, and full of love, it brought a new vision of India to the screen". Basil Wright considered it "a new and incontrovertible work of art". James Berardinelli wrote in 1996 that the film "touches the souls and minds of viewers, transcending cultural and linguistic barriers". In 2006 Philip French of "The Observer" called it "one of the greatest pictures ever made". Twenty years after the release of "Pather Panchali", Akira Kurosawa summarised the effect of the film as overwhelming and lauded its ability "to stir up deep passions". The reaction was not uniformly positive.