Aparajito Aparajito Aparajito ( "Ôporajito"; "The Unvanquished") is a 1956 Indian Bengali drama film written and directed by Satyajit Ray (1921–1992), and is the second part of "The Apu Trilogy". It is adapted from the last one-fifth of Bibhutibhushan Bannerjee's novel "Pather Panchali" (1929) and the first one-third of its sequel "Aparajito" (1932). It starts off where the previous film "Pather Panchali" (1955) ended, with Apu's family moving to Varanasi, and chronicles Apu's life from childhood to adolescence in college, right up to his mother's death, when he is left all alone. When Ray started making "Pather Panchali", he had no
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.