Distant Thunder (1973), also known as, Ashani Sanket is a cinematic masterpiece that takes us back to the heart-wrenching period of the Great Famine of 1943 in Bengal, India.

While Ray’s urban films depict spatial confinement, his rural films like Pather Panchali (1955) and Ashani Sanket (1973) present open landscapes that offer both freedom and fatalism.

That young man, Satyajit Ray, became one of the 20th century’s greatest filmmakers and that first movie, “Pather Panchali” (“Song of the Little Road”), a masterpiece.