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Ashani Sanket (Distant Thunder)
| Year | 1973 |
|---|---|
| Producer | Balaka Movies |
| Screenplay | Satyajit Ray |
| Based on | The novel Ashani Sanket by Bibhutibhushan Banerjee |
| Photography | Soumendu Roy |
| Editor | Dulal Dutta |
| Art Director | Ashoke Bose |
| Music | Satyajit Ray |
| Sound | J. D. Irani, Durgadas Mitra |
| Length | 101 min. |
| Color |
Cast:
| Gangacharan Chakravarty | Soumitra Chatterjee |
|---|---|
| Ananga | Babita |
| Biswas | Ramesh Mukherjee |
| Moti | Chitra Banerjee |
| Dinabandhu | Govinda Chakravarty |
| Chutki | Sandhya Roy |
| Jadu | Noni Ganguli |
| Moksada | Seli Pal |
| Khenti | Suchita Roy |
| Nibaran | Anil Ganguli |
| Adhar | Debatosh Ghosh |
The action, which occurs in a tiny village in 1943, during World War II, is based on the man-made famine that caused the deaths of five million inhabitants of Colonial Bengal.
Gangacharan, a Brahmin recently settled in the village with his wife Ananga, decides to start a school in exchange for being supported by the villagers. Airplanes disturb the peaceful sky, a metaphor for the disruption of traditional life of the villagers by War in Europe. It causes the price of rice to increase rapidly. This causes hardship for and rioting by the villagers and hoarding of grain by merchants. Gangacharan, shrewd, manages to initially keep himself supplied with food in exchange for his services. However conditions begin to deteriorate rapidly. Anaga is molested while hunting for edible roots in the lush forest, highlighting the irony of the situation: there is no drought and the fields have produced a good harvest that season. The film ends with Anaga telling Ganga about her pregnancy as a deluge of starving humanity approaches them.
