Satyajit Ray

How Bengali Cinema Reimagined Durga as a Mirror of Women’s Lives

From Satyajit Ray’s Devi to Rituparno Ghosh’s Parama, Bengali cinema has repeatedly turned to Durga not simply as a religious icon but as a lens through which to examine women’s agency, domestic power and social control. Across films such as Utsab and Antarmahal, the goddess becomes a charged symbol of the contradictions between divine strength and the constrained realities of women’s lives.