Apur Panchali Apur Panchali Apur Panchali is a 2013 Bengali film directed by Kaushik Ganguly and produced by Shree Venkatesh Films. It is based on the life of Subir Banerjee, the actor who played Apu in "Pather Panchali" (1955), the first film of Satyajit Ray's Apu trilogy. Director Kaushik Ganguly won the award of best director for "Apur Panchali" in the 44th International Film Festival of India (IFFI) in November 2013. The director mentioned in an interview that he found similarities between certain parts of the life of Subir Banerjee and the iconic character Apu. The film uses several minutes of footage
Pather Panchali had met Ray on the set of "The River", where Mitra was allowed to observe the production, take photographs and make notes about lighting for personal reference. Having become friends, Mitra kept Ray informed about the production and showed his photographs. Ray was impressed enough by them to promise him an assistant's position on "Pather Panchali", and when production neared, invited him to shoot the film. As the 21-year-old Mitra had no prior filmmaking experience, the choice was met with scepticism by those who knew of the production. Mitra himself later speculated that Ray was nervous about working with an