Critical reception outside of India, however, was overwhelmingly positive. It won 11 international awards, including the Golden Lion and Critics Award at the Venice Film Festival, becoming the first ever film to win both. Veteran film-maker Mrinal Sen said he considers it to be one of the best Indian movies he had ever seen. Bosley Crowther said that "It is done with such rare feeling and skill at pictorial imagery, and with such sympathetic understanding of Indian character on the part of Mr. Ray, that it develops a sort of hypnotism for the serene and tolerant viewer." The critical acclaim this movie received encouraged Ray to make another sequel, "Apur Sansar" (1959), which was equally well received, and thus concluded one of the most critically acclaimed movie trilogies of all time, as Roger Ebert later pointed out—"The three films ... swept the top prizes at Cannes, Venice and London, and created a new cinema for India — whose prolific film industry had traditionally stayed within the narrow confines of swashbuckling musical romances. Never before had one man had such a decisive impact on the films of his culture."