lost in biswa banglaland
October 2025
#Cinema
Lost in Biswa Bangla Land

By: Mrinalini Vasudevan

Mrinalini Vasudevan is a cultural critic and writer known for her incisive commentary on contemporary Indian cinema and urban culture. Her works often explore the intersection of politics, identity, and modernity in evolving cityscapes like Kolkata.

Conversations on modern-day Kolkata often revolve around one persistent lament—that the city is afflicted by a viscous stagnation, and somehow survives as a dusty, unkept museum within a gallery of crumbling façades. The same lament is routinely echoed in critiques of contemporary Bangla cinema. Many wonder how the land that gave us the powerful creativity of the likes of Satyajit Ray has come to be stuck in a loop of sentimental, worn-out tropes. While there is certainly truth in these harsh judgements, to frame the current city and its popular culture as static would be to ignore the reality of the sweeping changes that have reshaped it.

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Still from Mayanagar (Dir. Aditya Vikram Sengupta, 2021)

These films were screened and praised at various national and overseas film festivals in 2020-21, but due to the restrictions posed by the Covid-19 pandemic, they had delayed, shortlived public releases in Kolkata’s cinema halls, including at the government-run Nandan. While Ghose’s film is already streaming on the Bengali OTT platform Hoichoi, Roychowdhury and Sengupta are still looking for offers from other online platforms, which rarely show interest in such projects.

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Still from Jhilli (Dir. Ishan Ghose, 2021)

But even within the limited spaces available to them, these films have left a mark. Much like Bokul in Jhilli, who often aims his fake hand pistol at the planes that fly by above, these filmmakers register their criticism of development that has evaded the citizens of Biswa Bangla, despite the promise of poriborton.