Aparajito

Aparajito continues the story of Apu, the boy introduced in Pather Panchali, after his family leaves their rural home for the sacred city of Benares. The death of his father leaves Apu and his mother to manage on their own, and the film follows the boy as he grows into a curious, academically gifted teenager. Offered the chance to study in Kolkata, he faces a choice between the life his mother wants for him and the wider world he wants to enter, and the distance between them shapes the rest of the story.

Satyajit Ray wrote, produced and directed the film, the second part of his Apu trilogy and the second of the features he directed, following Pather Panchali in 1955 and preceding The World of Apu in 1959. Pinaki Sengupta plays the young Apu and Smaran Ghosal the teenager, with Kanu Bannerjee and Karuna Banerjee as his parents. The cast runs to twenty-two credited performers.

Released in 1956, the drama has an IMDb rating of 8.2 from around 19,000 votes and a TMDB rating of 7.8 from about 300 votes, while a critics' rating stands at 9.4 from 25 reviews, indicating that reviewers have received it more warmly than audiences, though both are favorable.