Durga Puja on screen: The cinematic pulse of Durga Puja in Bengali films

Durga Puja is not just a festival in India. It is a season of memory, music, and collective heartbeat. Over the decades, Bengali cinema has returned to this grand celebration again and again sometimes as backdrop, sometimes as metaphor, sometimes as the soul of the story. From Satyajit Ray’s classic gaze to Rituparno Ghosh’s poetry, and through Kaushik Ganguly, Srijit Mukherji, Mainak Bhaumik and others Puja lives, glows, and speaks on screen.

Ray’s eternal lens

In Satyajit Ray’s cinema, Durga Puja often breathes like a silent character. In Pather Panchali (1955), rural stillness bursts into life with the festival’s preparations. Bamboo groves are cut. The idol’s frame slowly takes shape. The air fills with the conch’s call. What emerges is not spectacle but an intimate portrait of a village where tradition and rhythm move hand in hand. In Aparajito (1956), Puja becomes memory. The dawn of Mahalaya, incense smoke, the rolling thunder of the dhaak all return as fragments of Apu and Durga’s lost childhood. Ray turns ritual into emotion, making Puja an echo of nostalgia. In Devi (1960), faith turns feverish. In 19th century Bengal, Dayamoyee is declared an incarnation of Durga by her father-in-law. Ray places this terror within Puja’s spiritual heart. The Goddess becomes double — feminine power and the crushing weight of unwanted worship. A parable of bigotry and patriarchy that still stings. And in Joi Baba Felunath (1979), Puja enters the bustling lanes of Benaras. Amidst the festive crowd, Feluda chases a trail of mystery. The clash of colour and devotion with sharp logic creates rare tension. Ray shows that Puja is not only a sacred ritual but also a canvas of storytelling possibilities.

Ghosh’s intimate Puja

For Rituparno Ghosh, Puja was never just grandeur. It was family, conflict, and longing wrapped inside the fragrance of shiuli flowers. In Utsab (2000), a middle-class family gathers under the pretext of the festival. Old tensions resurface — marital discord, sibling tenderness, suppressed desires. The courtyard where the idol stands becomes a mirror of relationships, fragile yet fierce. Ghosh crafts Puja not as spectacle but as the pulse of domestic life joyful, painful, achingly real. In Antarmahal (2005), based on Tarasankar Bandyopadhyay’s Pratima, Ghosh explores the late 19th century. The Goddess embodies both creativity and the stark face of patriarchal control.

Ganguly’s urban echoes

Kaushik Ganguly often frames Puja within the contradictions of modern life. His characters carry urban restlessness into the season. In his works, the dhaak does not drown out anxieties — it amplifies them. Pandals, with their shimmer and excess, reveal not just devotion but also the fractures of contemporary existence. His lens suggests that even amidst celebration, solitude lingers.

Mukherji’s dramatic canvas

Srijit Mukherji treats Puja with drama and grandeur. In his narratives, the festival becomes a stage where tradition collides with ambition, secrets, and desire. His camera sweeps across illuminated pandals, crowded streets, and moments of catharsis. For him, Puja is not just cultural memory but cinematic theatre — where emotion is heightened, and every beat of the dhaak feels like destiny.

Bhaumik’s youthful puja

Mainak Bhaumik captures the festival through the eyes of Kolkata’s youth. In his films, Puja means new clothes, long walks, late-night adda, love blooming under the lights of the pandal. His portrayal is intimate yet playful, filled with the texture of contemporary adolescence. Through his lens, Durga Puja belongs not only to the past but vibrantly to the present.

Sen’s Puja of justice

In Debipaksha (2004), Raja Sen reimagines Puja as a stage for justice and feminine power. Haimanti, scarred by sexual assault, lives in silence until her sister’s safety is threatened. Then she awakens. Durga rises within her. The parallel between the Goddess slaying evil and Haimanti confronting her oppressors is striking. Puja becomes not only a ritual but a moral force, sanctifying her fight for dignity.

Generational tensions in festival time

In Belaseshe (2015), Shiboprosad Mukherjee and Nandita Roy bring Puja into the heart of family drama. The Majumdar household gathers in festive unity. Then comes the fracture: 75-year-old Biswanath calmly declares he wants a divorce. The festival of togetherness collides with painful reality. Against the backdrop of conch shells and dhaak, the film reflects generational change and fragile bonds. Ayananshu Banerjee’s Bodhon (2015) also begins with Puja. On Mahalaya, as chants awaken the Goddess, Ishani struggles with her own awakening. Questions of motherhood, loss, and selfhood haunt her. The ritual of bodhon, the invocation of the Goddess, mirrors her personal rebirth. Puja here becomes interior — a festival of the soul.

Banerjee’s adventurous Puja

With Durgeshgorer Guptodhon (2019), Dhrubo Banerjee turns Puja into a playground of adventure. Sonada and his companions arrive at an ancestral home during Puja. The grand rituals, family celebrations, old chants — beneath them lie cryptic clues to hidden treasure. The film blends festive colour with the thrill of a hunt, showing how Puja can be sacred yet cinematic spectacle, alive with suspense and play.

Durga Puja in Hindi cinema

As in Bengali films, Durga Puja has also found a powerful presence in Hindi cinema. In Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Devdas (2002), the festival’s grandeur unites Paro and Chandramukhi in shared devotion, transcending rivalry. In Pradeep Sarkar’s Parineeta (2005), Puja becomes a prism through which tradition and modernity clash. Sujoy Ghosh’s Kahaani (2012) turns the Puja crowd into camouflage and metaphor — Vidya Bagchi moves unseen amid the throngs, her quest echoing the Goddess’s triumph. More recently, Puja has flickered across films like Lootera, Gunday, and Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani. These sequences, often brief, are not decorative. They lend cultural depth, authenticity, and emotional charge. Together, they prove that Puja is no longer just a Bengali celebration it has become a universal cinematic emotion.

The festival as cinema

For filmmakers, Puja has never been just a backdrop. It is memory, metaphor, and mood. In Ray, it is innocence and nostalgia. In Ghosh, the delicate music of family. In Kaushik, contradiction and social tension. In Mukherji, drama and intensity. In Bhaumik, the restless wonder of youth. Each vision is different, yet the truth is the same: Puja on screen is not celebrated — it is lived. It is the soul itself, a weave of devotion and desire, history and hope. Eternal, ever-renewing, it sings the oldest refrain: a hymn to life, and light’s triumph over darkness.

By Zahid Ahmed Tapadar