Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury returned to Bengali cinema after a hiatus of almost a decade, during which he made waves with his Hindi film outings, Pink, Lost and Kadak Singh. Even as he basks in the warm reception to his new film, Dear Maa, Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri looks at his legacy as a game-changer in Bengali films. 

Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury, celebrated for redefining Bengali and Hindi cinema with films like Anuranan, Antaheen, Aparajita Tumi, Buno Haansh, Pink, Lost, Kadak Singh and now Dear Maa, stands out as a filmmaker who masterfully blends emotional intimacy with socio-political resonance. His narratives explore urban melancholy, moral ambiguity, complex relationships, and strong female characters, often set against the vivid backdrop of Kolkata or diaspora life. Whether depicting the quiet grief of middle-class families, the moral greys of survival, or the redefinition of motherhood and parenthood, Chowdhury’s work is marked by understated performances, minimalism, and poetic musicality. Dear Maa, his return to Bengali cinema after a decade, continues his legacy of crafting layered, thought-provoking cinema that bridges craft and conscience, leaving audiences with stories that linger long after the credits roll.

‘I stand between two worlds. I belong to no worlds.’ ‘Fly … not with wings but with the heart, (with) life itself.’

These are not extracts from a philosopher’s discourse. They are snippets of conversations from Aparajita Tumi and Antaheen, respectively, two of the three films that I see as filmmaker Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury’s ‘relationship trilogy’, the other being Anuranan. For me, they highlight the director’s approach to his craft, his worldview. Aniruddha has carved a distinct niche in Indian cinema through a body of work that spans multiple languages, emotional territories, and socio-political landscapes. Emerging from the Bengali film milieu with a quiet intensity, Chowdhury’s career has gradually expanded into the Hindi film industry, where he has brought with him a keen sense of mood, character and conscience.

The Upwardly Mobile Middle-Class Trilogy: Melancholy, Emotional Complexity and Ambiguity

Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury’s debut film Anuranan set the tone for his early preoccupations. A film steeped in silences, psychological textures and complex interpersonal relationships, Anuranan showcased his interest in the inner lives of his characters rather than plot-driven storytelling. The film explores emotional compatibility and the fragility of modern marriages, using landscape and music to emphasize mood. The use of the mountains as both physical and emotional terrain, the expository nature of the characters’ musings on relationships, and the layered narrative hinted at a director who was more aligned with the sensibilities of auteurs like Rituparno Ghosh or Aparna Sen than with mainstream Bengali cinema.

This style found further refinement in Antaheen, a meditation on urban loneliness, love in the digital age, and the duality of real and virtual selves. The story of a television journalist and a police officer who form a deep emotional bond online without knowing each other’s identities was deeply prescient. Here, Chowdhury’s signature emerges: a delicate balance between visual elegance and emotional authenticity. The city, particularly Kolkata, is not just a backdrop in his films – it is a living, breathing character, shaping the moods and motivations of the protagonists.

In Aparajita Tumi, adapted from Sunil Gangopadhyay’s novel, Chowdhury navigates the fragile emotional terrain of modern relationships, this time set against the backdrop of the Bengali diaspora in the United States.

The film explores themes of infidelity, cultural dislocation, and the existential boredom of the privileged. The expat setting allows Chowdhury to reflect on identity, alienation, and the longing for home, both literal and metaphorical. Visually lush and boasting strong performances, the film can perhaps be flawed for a certain ennui that marks its characters. However, once you get a sense of the director’s mind, you realize that given the ‘loneliness, the void, the search’ (the director’s words while talking of these films) that animate these characters, they cannot but be the way they are. Any overt ‘action’ on their part would make the narratives false to the premise underlying them. Aparajita Tumi solidified Chowdhury’s position as a filmmaker interested in the emotional lives of the middle-class, with all their neuroses and dreams.

One of the core features of Chowdhury’s cinema is the preference for ambiguity over clarity. His films often deny the viewer traditional resolutions. Antaheen, for instance, ends with a note of tragedy and irony, resisting the comfort of reunion. Anuranan allows misunderstandings and silence to fester instead of resolving them with dramatic confrontations. This narrative quietude is both a strength and a limitation. For audiences seeking catharsis, Chowdhury’s films can be emotionally unfulfilling. However, for those attuned to introspective, character-driven storytelling, his work offers a slow-burning but lasting impact.

The Themes in the Trilogy

Watching the trilogy, you realize with a start how certain themes play out time and again in each of these.

Each film is marked by the death of a principal character, and in each case it is rather sudden, engendering an end to the possibilities in the relationships these characters build through the narratives, while strangely enough opening them to the possibilities of relationships they had probably not thought of. Rahul’s (Rahul Bose) entirely unexpected death in Anuranan shuts the door to an evolving relationship with Preeti (Raima Sen). There’s no doubt that Rahul loves his wife Nandita (Rituparna Sengupta), and yet there’s just the hint, the possibility of something brewing between Rahul and Preeti which ends abruptly.

Something similar happens in Antaheen with the death of Brinda (Radhika Apte), just when she and Abhik (Rahul Bose) are beginning to discover each other’s identities as the online friends who have been communicating with each other. It also throws into sharp relief the character of Abhik’s aunt (played by Sharmila Tagore). It’s only with Brinda’s death that you realize the import, and are able to draw the lines between what Brinda and Abhik had, and Pishima’s unconsummated relationship with a ‘voice over the telephone’ decades ago.

It’s only in Aparajita Tumi that one is aware of Pradip’s (Prosenjit Chatterjee) impending death, and yet that too leaves one longing about the possibilities of the intertwined relationships in the film. Interestingly, Pradip’s death throws open the film to a potential understanding between the wife Kuhu (Padmapriya Jankiraman) and the other woman Ushashi (Kamalinee Mukherjee), that would not have been otherwise possible. We see this in Anuranan too, after Rahul’s passing, when Nandita and Preeti meet, and in the wistfulness that creeps into the relationship between the elderly couple Paro and Ranjan (Aparna Sen and Kalyan Ray) in Antaheen, who realize how frail the human condition is.

‘I am not very articulate, so I am not sure I can put a finger to the point you have raised. I see a film as a life, and life dictates its own course. I cannot come out with a film every year, I need to stay with a thought, let it marinate over a period,’ Aniruddha tells me over a conversation. ‘I see these as molten memories. My mother passed away in 2001. Not that I was extremely attached to her, but her death was a shattering experience. In her last days I stayed with her as much as I could, and once she was gone, there was this nothingness, a void, that stayed on. If you remember, in Aparajita Tumi, as Pradip moves inexorably towards the inevitable, watching the world outside through his window, Kuhu asks him, “Ki dekhchho?” (What are you looking at?) He responds, “Rasta.” (The road.). That’s a conversation I had with my mother in her last days.’

Then there’s the aspect of childlessness that couples deal with in each of these films. Even in Aparajita Tumi, where Pradip and Kuhu have children, the latter leaves them in the care of their grandmother as she negotiates the fall-out of her break with her husband following his affair. So much so, even a peripheral character like the one essayed by Sudipta Chakraborty in Buno Haansh, the film that marks a decisive break in the director’s trajectory, has an intense sequence where she laments her childless state.  

Again, like the ‘sudden deaths’ that permeate his films, Aniruddha insists that this aspect also came about organically, without design. ‘It’s that “molten memories” thing again. I have been around couples who have no children, some who have made a conscious choice, others who have it forced upon them by circumstances. I remember my teacher in South Point whose child died young. I have never forgotten the way he spoke about the emptiness that entailed – “The home has become a grave,” he once told me. While it’s a cliché to say that being childless renders a couple more bohemian in their approach to life, there’s a certain dynamic to their relationships that is different from couples who have children. You see, relationships are a play of light and shadow, and there are no absolutes. And this aspect you mention probably allows me to explore that in-between stage where there’s neither total darkness nor blinding light. It’s like a classical musician experimenting with the notes that are ever evolving.’ 

Buno Haansh and Narrative Experimentation  

Buno Haansh, based on a novel by Samaresh Majumdar, marks a departure from the director’s usual themes. His aesthetics in the film are so markedly different from the relationship trilogy as to make the film an outlier in his filmography. While the film was ambitious in its attempt to portray the underworld and the moral grey areas of survival, it is perhaps the least discussed of Chowdhury’s films. This is probably because it marked a 180-degree turn from what people had come to expect of an Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury film. However, it remains important in understanding his career.

Buno Haansh represents a filmmaker’s desire to experiment and engage with a broader canvas, something that would later translate more effectively in his Hindi ventures. And though audiences and critics were laudatory about the way Kolkata was depicted in his Hindi film Lost, I personally feel that Buno Haansh is probably one of the best films to have captured the city on celluloid. You get a sense of the city’s underbelly in the way the director and his cinematographer Harindranath Singh frame the narrative.

One of its major highlights is Dev in probably his most atypical role. Here is a hero who is positively unheroic. Right through the film, he has little agency and is being played by the people around him. In this, it is possible to see a continuation of the everyday men and women that people the trilogy that preceded Buno Haansh, pawns in the hand of fate with little agency in their desires and passions. And Dev delivers in what is the most understated, and arguably the best, performance of his career.

Aniruddha says, ‘If my first three films are me as I am now, Buno Haansh is me forty years ago. I am Amal (Dev). I grew up in an ambience like that. In fact, I received an offer like the one Amal does. This was in 1981. I was an Odonil salesman at the time. I had bought a pirated VHS tape of a Truffaut movie, but I had no VCR. I had put together some money but was short of the required amount by 7000 rupees, which is when I got an offer from someone I knew: “I will give you 300,000 rupees, if you deliver a packet, no questions asked.” I of course did not accept the offer. But Amal does, and that makes the film what it is.’

Buno Haansh marked a decisive break with the past for Tony. He would not only move away from the personal to a more politically and socially aware cinema, but also from Bengali to Hindi, with Pink, Lost and Kadak Singh. This period deserves a separate feature for a detailed exploration of the director’s evolution.  

A Game-Changer: Music, ‘A Piece of the Moon’, and the Importance of Being Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury

In an article on Bengali films of the new millennium that proved game-changers, filmmaker Suman Ghosh wrote, ‘I think Anuranan was one of the reasons behind urban-centric multiplex films taking off in a big way in Kolkata. Multiplexes had just started in Kolkata a year back and the film gave a much-needed boost to that. The Bengali industry needed a film like this to sustain the multiplex era. Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury’s films have always had that gloss, the glitz, the glamour with exciting locations. Anuranan was shot in London, a big deal for Bengali films then. Antaheen followed it up with a big star cast in Sharmila Tagore, Aparna Sen and Radhika Apte who subsequently became one of the big stars of the country. These films had a large canvas, which Bengali films needed to be able to think big. They made a big contribution to Bengali cinema in increasing its scope and canvas beyond narrow, constricted approaches. These were relationship stories, but they encompassed a different way of shooting, and the end result was unlike what we had seen before.’

And then there’s the music. Before Srijit Mukherji and Anupam Roy changed the landscape of Bengali film music, there was Aniruddha, Shantanu Moitra and Antaheen. Like his penchant for working with non-Bengali actors – Rajat Kapoor, Radhika Apte, Padmapriya Jankiraman – even in his Bengali films, he roped in Shantanu Moitra, then known for his work in Hindi cinema, to compose Antaheen. And the rest, as they say, is history.

That Aniruddha lays a great store by music is apparent in the way he says: ‘I do not envy anyone – only someone who can sing and compose music. A few songs a day, keep the worries away.’ As for zeroing in on Shantanu Moitra, he had loved Parineeta, was mesmerized by ‘Bawra mann’, and totally charmed by Khoya Khoya Chand. ‘I was supposed to do a Hindi film. I met Shantanu and at the first meeting he said, giving me a piece of a meteor he had got from a travel to Russia, “Tomake ek tukro chaand dilam.” (Here’s a piece of the moon for you). After that there was no question that I was not working with Shantanu. Then a friend introduced me to the band Chandrabindoo, and its members Anindya and Chandril. I went with my gut, there was no design. The way they communicated images with words was phenomenal. For example, consider the flicker of the laptop when you are working on it, and imagine the words “Anguler koley jawlay jonaki” (Fireflies flicker on your fingertips) – that’s imagination. Or the words “Abhchhaya janalar kaach” – I remember how it evoked one of Maa’s letters to me where she says, I am sending you a few strands of cloud, rinse it of its water. When you have collaborators like these, who can evoke what you have felt and experienced…’  

Antaheen’s music played a crucial role in shaping not only the emotional core of the film but also left a significant impact on the trajectory of music in Bengali cinema. It brought back the tradition of soulful, situational music that seamlessly blended into the narrative. The soundtrack did not function as a break from the story, but rather as its continuation, extending the film’s atmosphere of quiet longing, loneliness, and romantic melancholy. The songs evoked not only poetic beauty but also carried the weight of the characters’ emotional states.  

‘Pherari mon’ and ‘Jao paakhi’ became instant classics. Their haunting melody and lyrics about wandering, restless souls captured the film’s central theme of urban alienation and digital-age romance.

The minimalist instrumentation, blending classical Indian motifs with modern ambient textures, was a refreshing departure from the trend of over-produced pop numbers. The music of Antaheen also represented a shift towards more pan-Indian and even global musical aesthetics within the framework of Bengali cinema. Shantanu Moitra’s background as a Hindi film composer brought a certain refinement and cross-cultural sensibility. Yet, he maintained a deep understanding of Bengali emotional nuances, making the compositions feel rooted and authentic. This blending of aesthetics – local and global, traditional and contemporary – was a turning point for how film music was conceived in regional cinema.

Furthermore, the film’s success placed a renewed spotlight on the importance of thoughtful, story-driven soundtracks in Bengali cinema. Antaheen inspired a wave of films that took their music seriously, treating it as an integral part of the narrative rather than an afterthought. Films like Hemlock Society and Chotushkone followed in its footsteps, continuing this tradition of poetic, narrative-embedded music. It appealed to an urban, literate audience that had perhaps grown distanced from Bengali film music but found in Antaheen a reflection of their own emotional complexities. The film’s music paved the way for a new wave of filmmakers and composers who saw music as poetry set to tune, capable of deep introspection and emotional resonance. 

Dear Maa: A Subtle Meditation on Parenthood and Choice Wrapped in the Garb of a Thriller

As he returns to Bengali cinema after engaging with three films in Hindi – Pink, Lost and Kadak Singh – there’s a continuation with some of themes in his early films: parenthood, death, music. In that lies both Dear Maa’s strength and weakness. Few filmmakers in Bengal address these issues with as much conviction and nuance as Aniruddha does. So, it’s impossible to fault him on that score in Dear Maa. Yet, as someone who has admired his cinema, and what it has meant to Bengali cinema overall, there’s a part of me that just couldn’t help wondering: could he have attempted something different, could he have approached a subject he has not tackled?  

Not that he does not try here. He wraps up these themes in the garb of a thriller so that Dear Maa is a film that works on multiple registers. At once a mystery and a chamber drama, a meditation on parenthood and a quietly radical statement on a woman’s right to choose, it unfolds like a psychological thriller compressed into the span of a single, emotionally fraught evening. Beyond its genre trappings and dramatic plotting, it’s also a deeply humane film, suffused with unspoken griefs and moments of warmth.

Aniruddha turns his discerning gaze once again to the emotional landscape of modern relationships, placing at the heart of his narrative a theme that has long evoked impassioned debates: what does it truly mean to be a mother?

In a world that is gradually redefining parenthood beyond traditional frameworks, his film is both timely and deeply affecting, offering a textured meditation on adoption, emotional bonding, and the complicated, often unspoken truths of love and family ties.

At its core, Dear Maa is not just about motherhood; it is about the making of a mother. The film opens with Brinda Mitra (Jaya Ahsan), a successful start-up co-founder, at a police station to file a missing person report. Her teenage daughter, Sohini aka Jhimli (Nandika Das), has gone missing. Accompanying her is Somesh (Dhritiman Chaterji), a father-figure and mentor. The story unfolds in layers through a series of flashbacks interwoven with police inquiry led by the sharp officer Nandi (Saswata Chatterjee, who is a scream as a man obsessed with his mobile phone – just watch him interact with his wife and son, on cooking, tuition classes, and sundry everyday matters, even as he is conducting the investigation).

Through Brinda’s recollections, we are introduced to the complex history she shares with her husband Awrko (Chandan Roy Sanyal), both high-flying professionals. While Awrko’s desire to be a father grows, Brinda resists, emotionally unprepared and unwilling to compromise her ambitions for motherhood. Eventually, after much marital turbulence and counselling, the couple adopts an infant girl, Jhimli.

From the outset, the emotional fabric of this unconventional family is unevenly stitched. Awrko is the doting, emotionally invested parent; Brinda, although not indifferent, remains distanced, preoccupied with her career. Jhimli, in turn, forms a deeper attachment with Awrko and the family’s long-time domestic help, Nirmala (Anubha Fatehpuria). Following a sudden and unexpected turn of events that creates an emotional vacuum for the child, Brinda must step in. However, she finds herself confronting not just Jhimli’s emotional withdrawal but the dawning revelation that her daughter may be seeking out her biological mother.

What Dear Maa excels at is in showing that motherhood is not a fixed identity acquired through childbirth. Rather, it is a dynamic emotional process, fraught with self-doubt, failure, and redemption. Brinda’s journey is one of late blooming, of discovering, too late perhaps, the invisible threads that tether a child to her mother. Jaya Ahsan delivers a performance of remarkable depth, capturing Brinda’s contradictions: her desire to nurture, her guilt at having been absent, her quiet devastation when she realises that she may have lost her daughter emotionally.

In one striking sequence, Brinda asserts vehemently, ‘I am Jhimli’s mother’, but only after she realises that Jhimli is forging a bond with her biological mother. The director keeps the subtext open to interpretation: is this her inherent desire for motherhood asserting itself, or is there an element of aggrieved ego involved here? Contrast this with her earlier confession to Awrko about not being ‘mother material’, about not having ‘that motherly feeling’. It’s a startling confession for a woman to make in Indian cinema. This is highlighted in another sequence where Somesh reminds her, when she is complaining about the biological mother becoming important to Jhimli: ‘Tumi chhara Jhimlir keu aachhe – Jhimli chhhara tomar ki keu aachhe?’ (Jhimli now has someone apart from you – do you have anyone apart from Jhimli?)

The director doesn’t romanticise motherhood. In fact, one of the film’s strongest statements lies in its refusal to pass judgement. Brinda is not portrayed as a neglectful or selfish woman. She is ambitious, driven, and confused. The film dares to ask difficult questions: Is it enough to provide materially for a child? Can love be manufactured, after neglect? And what does it mean when a mother must earn her daughter’s affection? In another telling sequence, Brinda is trying to be an attentive mother, playing with Jhimli, but distracted by work issues on the phone, leading Jhimli to ask who her real mother is, and say: will an ‘ashol’ maa go through the phone when playing with her daughter?

While Dear Maa is intensely personal, it also functions as a subtle critique of societal expectations and prejudices. Adoption is still considered a second-best option in many social circles, and the film gently but firmly dismantles that notion. The narrative points to the deep psychological entanglements around adoption, not just for the child, but more crucially for the adoptive parents, as well as the biological parent when added to the mix.

In one of the film’s most telling sequences, the police, upon hearing that Jhimli has gone missing, speculate whether a boyfriend is involved. It’s a seemingly casual comment but brims with the kind of gendered assumption that still colours our institutions. Likewise, the stigma and secrecy around Jhimli’s biological mother (played by Padmapriya Janakiraman in a restrained cameo) reveal how society still refuses to speak of certain truths openly, forcing children and parents alike to carry emotional burdens in silence.

The screenplay by Shakyajit Bhattacharya complements Chowdhury’s vision with precision, alternating between moments of domestic stillness and sharp emotional confrontation. The narrative structure is non-linear, but it never feels disjointed. Instead, it mirrors the fragmented, often contradictory memories that shape the inner lives of its characters.

The performances are uniformly strong. Jaya Ahsan’s Brinda is a portrait of restraint and eventual surrender. Chandan Roy Sanyal brings a warm sincerity to Awrko, a man whose love for his child comes to define him more than his career ever did. Anubha Fatehpuria is wonderful as Nirmala; the household help whose quiet presence offers stability when the adults falter. But perhaps the most significant achievement is the characterization of Jhimli, played by both the young Ohona and the adolescent Nandika Das. Her fear, her confusion, and her quest for identity form the beating heart of the story. Nandika’s performance is heartbreakingly nuanced, especially in the later scenes where her sense of betrayal battles with her longing for belonging.

There are sequences where she is looking for meaningful engagement with Brinda – like the one at the dining table in which Jhimli speaks about being grateful to Brinda, and the latter responds, wholly inappropriately, with a rasping, ‘Who wants your gratefulness’ – that reminded me of my failure as a father. And when a film does that, when it echoes a personal experience in a viewer, it has succeeded.

The film, however, is not without its flaws. Aniruddha’s characters right across his filmography – particularly in the relationship trilogy – are articulate in discussing their conditions. Here, I could not help longing for some silences instead of exposition. The tender and evocative film occasionally leans too heavily on dialogue where silence might have spoken louder. In moments charged with emotion, the verbal exposition risks diluting the depth the visuals so powerfully convey. Consider, for example, the biological mother’s observation, ‘I can fly if only I am deeply rooted.’ This harks back to similar aphorisms Aniruddha used in his early films. There they felt organic. Here, it is just a clever line meant for emotional impact.

Given the film’s poetic spirit and its clear evocation of Shankha Ghosh’s ‘Chup karo, shobdoheen hoy’ (Be silent, devoid of words), these stretches feel at odds with the contemplative quietude the poem celebrates. Maybe the screenplay could have adhered a little more to Shankha Ghosh’s exhortation. A more restrained approach, letting silence carry the weight of feeling, could have deepened its impact, allowing viewers to absorb meaning beyond words, in the spaces between them.  

Certain psychological dimensions are raised but not fully explored. The recurring motif of Jhimli’s childhood fears and anxieties are hinted at, but the film glosses over Brinda’s early realisation that Jhimli is drifting away emotionally. The lack of engagement with work-life balance feels like a missed opportunity in a film so invested in realism. Another minor drawback is the slightly abrupt resolution of the mystery surrounding Jhimli’s disappearance. The narrative tension builds beautifully, but the climax doesn’t quite match the emotional heft of what precedes it. And the post-climactic coda is a bit of a stretch.  

As in many of Aniruddha’s films, the music plays a subtle but evocative role in shaping the emotional terrain. The songs don’t intrude; they flow with the rhythm of the story, often carrying the weight of what remains unsaid. Bickram Ghosh crafts a nuanced, layered background score that subtly weaves itself into the emotional fabric of the narrative. Unlike the overt or often intrusive musical choices in many contemporary films, Ghosh’s composition here is an exercise in restraint and sensitivity. His music doesn’t compete with the storytelling; it enhances it. With an intricate blend of Indian classical motifs and ambient textures, the score mirrors the internal landscapes of the characters, particularly the complex emotional tether between mother and child.

Each musical cue feels intentional, echoing unspoken tensions or quiet moments of revelation. This considered layering deepens the emotional resonance of pivotal moments, allowing the audience to feel rather than be told what to feel. Importantly, the background music respects silence, allowing space for dialogue and visual storytelling to breathe. Ghosh’s score in Dear Maa serves as a narrative companion rather than a backdrop, proving that when used with care and intelligence, music can be an invisible yet powerful force in cinematic storytelling. It is this quiet brilliance that sets it apart from the cluttered soundscapes of many modern films.

Dear Maa - it is not a film that offers clear answers. It offers empathy. It does not glorify motherhood but humanises it. It understands that some women are not born mothers; they grow into it. And that growth can be painful, uneven, even unfair. It is a film that gently reminds us: even those we love deeply may never know how much they mean to us unless we tell them.

The film is a quiet triumph. In its soft-spoken way, it demands that we look again at the people we call family, and ask ourselves what we owe them, and what we still have time to give. A layered, moving portrayal of motherhood that transcends biology, with strong performances and a thoughtful script that lingers well after the credits roll

The Recurring of Many Themes in Aniruddh’s Body of Work

Across Aniruddha’s body of work, several themes recur: emotional isolation, moral ambiguity, gender politics, and the struggle to retain integrity in the face of institutional decay. Stylistically, his films are marked by a penchant for minimalism. He favours silences, ambient soundscapes, and understated performances. There’s a marked preference for depicting urban melancholy: cities, especially Kolkata, function as emotional ecosystems – lonely, dense, yet quietly alive. The female characters are empowered. From Antaheen to Pink, Lost, Dear Maa, women in his films are not peripheral, but agents of change, often navigating and challenging patriarchal structures. There’s a blending of genres. His work moves fluidly between romance, thriller, drama, and social critique, without losing thematic focus.

Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury’s evolution from Anuranan to Dear Maa is the journey of a filmmaker expanding his scale while holding on to his core principles. His films refuse spectacle in favour of introspection. Even when dealing with larger political issues, as in Pink or Lost, he never loses sight of the personal. This dual commitment – to the interior lives of characters and the exterior realities of society – is what makes his cinema unique.

At a time when Indian cinema often oscillates between commercial excess and empty minimalism, Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury offers a vital middle path: one that marries craft with conscience, and storytelling with subtlety. Whether he is filming the snow-capped peaks of Anuranan, the late-night cityscapes of Antaheen, the courtrooms of Pink, or the murky politics of Lost, his voice remains calm, ethical and compelling.