Pather Panchali ("The Unvanquished", 1956), the second film of the Apu trilogy. Satyajit Ray, working as a graphic designer for Signet Press, created the illustrations for a new abridged edition of the book in 1944. At that time, Ray read the unabridged novel; Signet's owner D. K. Gupta told Ray that the abridged version would make a great film. The idea appealed to Ray, and around 1946–47, when he considered making a film, he turned to "Pather Panchali" because of certain qualities that "made it a great book: its humanism, its lyricism, and its ring of truth". The author's widow permitted Ray
Pather Panchali distributor of Region 2 while Columbia Tri-Star is the distributor of Region 1 format. In 2013, the video distribution company The Criterion Collection, in collaboration with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Film Archive, began the restoration of the original negatives of the Apu trilogy, including "Pather Panchali". These negatives had been severely damaged by a fire in London in 1993, and all film cans and fragments belonging to the Ray films were sent to the Motion Picture Academy for storage, where they lay unseen for two decades. It was discovered upon reexamination that, although many parts of