A River Called Titas

Director: Ritwik Ghatak

1973 / 159min / DCP

Fisherman Kishore (Prabir Mitra) has barely exchanged vows with his new bride, Basanti (Rosy Samad), when she’s kidnapped by river bandits, and though she makes a daring escape, when finally found by strangers she doesn’t know enough about her new groom to find her way back to him—until 10 years later when, with a young son in tow, she sets out on a journey along the banks of the Titas in hopes of finding a father for the boy. Ghatak’s penultimate film—one of the first made in Bangladesh following its independence—succeeds spectacularly as both a wrenching melodrama, pivoting on outrageous coincidence, and a melancholy contemplation of a way of life, that of the fisherfolk of East Bengal, soon to be erased by modernity.

Distributor: Janus Films