‘Palan’, ‘Chaalchitra Ekhon’, ‘Padatik’: Three contemporary films that pay tribute to Mrinal Sen

Few filmmakers have shaped parallel cinema in India as much as Mrinal Sen, whose restless experimentation, sharp social gaze and realistic storytelling altered the grammar of filmmaking.

As we remember Sen on his 103rd birth anniversary today, it is impossible not to revisit the wave of cinematic tributes that emerged during his birth centenary year in 2023.

Three contemporary Bengali filmmakers — Kaushik Ganguly, Anjan Dutt and Srijit Mukherji — approached Sen’s legacy from strikingly different perspectives. Their films — Palan, Chaalchitra Ekhon, and Padatik — attempted to engage with Sen’s cinema in its own way.

Palan: Kaushik Ganguly revisits the emotional world of Kharij

Palan, directed by Kaushik Ganguly, takes inspiration from Mrinal Sen’s National Award-winning 1982 film Kharij. Ganguly carries forward its characters into old age, crafting a fresh narrative on urban decay.

The film is set inside a crumbling old Kolkata house declared unsafe by civic authorities following an accidental death. Among the residents are Anjan and Mamata Sen — characters from Kharij reprised by Anjan Dutt and Mamata Shankar. Ageing, vulnerable and emotionally tied to the home they have inhabited for decades, the couple find themselves staring at uncertainty.

Their son Pupai (Jisshu Sengupta), and his wife, played by Paoli Dam, are drawn into the emotional and logistical turmoil surrounding the crisis. Ganguly uses this setup to explore not only family bonds, but also the shrinking emotional and physical spaces within modern urban life.

More than a nostalgic callback, Palan becomes an extension of Sen’s humanist cinema, carrying forward his concern for ordinary lives trapped within changing social realities.

Chaalchitra Ekhon: Anjan Dutt’s ode to his mentor

If Palan engages with Mrinal Sen’s cinematic universe, Chaalchitra Ekhon turns inward, exploring the personal relationship between Sen and Anjan Dutt himself.

Dutt has often acknowledged Sen as both mentor and father figure — someone who shaped not only his artistic sensibilities, but also his worldview. That emotional connection forms the backbone of Chaalchitra Ekhon, a film that deliberately avoids the structure of a conventional biopic.

At the centre of the narrative is Ranjan (Shawon Chakraborty), an ambitious young theatre director frustrated with Kolkata’s ideological rigidity and intellectual gatekeeping. While preparing a production of Peter Weiss’s Marat/Sade, Ranjan is assigned to interview veteran filmmaker Kunal Sen, played by Anjan Dutt himself, and clearly modelled on Mrinal Sen.

What begins as a routine interaction gradually transforms into an emotionally and intellectually transformative encounter. Through their conversations, the film explores questions of art, politics, rebellion, privilege and creative suffocation.

Dutt employs a meta-cinematic style, blurring the lines between autobiography and fiction. Rather than impersonating Mrinal Sen, Dutt filters the filmmaker through memory and personal experience. The result is intimate rather than reverential.

Padatik: Srijit Mukherji chronicles the rise of a cinematic revolutionary

While the previous two films approached Sen through memory and emotional association, Padatik by Srijit Mukherji adopts the structure of a full-fledged biographical drama.

Named after Sen’s landmark 1973 film Padatik — part of his iconic Calcutta Trilogy — the film traces the filmmaker’s journey from a struggling young man in Kolkata to one of the defining voices of India’s parallel cinema movement.

Mukherji’s film also attempts to correct what many perceive as the historical overshadowing of Mrinal Sen by Satyajit Ray in mainstream cinematic discourse.

At the heart of the film is a towering performance by Chanchal Chowdhury, whose transformation into Sen is startling in both physicality and temperament. Chowdhury captures the filmmaker’s eccentricities, intellectual sharpness and subtle self-assurance with authenticity.

Mukherji uses stylistic flourishes inspired by Sen’s own cinematic language — including jump cuts and fourth-wall breaks. Particularly striking are sequences juxtaposing Ray’s Aranyer Din Ratri with Sen’s Calcutta 71, underlining the ideological and aesthetic differences between the two masters.

One of the film’s highlights is its depiction of the complex relationship between Sen and Ray — a dynamic oscillating between admiration and artistic rivalry. Ritwik Ghatak also appears briefly, culminating in a memorable sequence featuring the three giants of Bengali cinema together.