When Soumitra Chatterjee passed away in November last year, it was clear Covid had claimed a beloved actor, but for many in Bengal, the loss seemed more personal. Longtime friend, director and one half of the celebrated Soumitra-Aparna pair, Aparna Sen wrote, “There seems to be almost no one left of the world I once knew...a world made up of certain sensibilities, certain value systems, both cultural and moral, the idea of a different (less mediocre?) Bengal, of a different (less reactionary?) India.” Chatterjee was many things to Kolkata’s film industry—legend, lodestar, luminary—and though the extent of his influence is hard to measure, actor-director Parambrata Chattopadhyay offers a short obituary: “[He] left the world, especially the film world, a little emptier.”
One of the last filmmakers to have directed Chatterjee,…
