Bengali cinema in America means Satyajit Ray, and we have a separate piece on where his films are. This one is about everything else: the other great director of his generation, the popular cinema he stood apart from, and what Kolkata is making now.
By our count around 570 Bengali films are on some US service, which is far fewer than Tamil or Malayalam. The interesting part is where they are. Apple TV and Prime Video hold the rentable classics. The Criterion Channel holds the restorations. And ZEE5, which most American viewers think of as a Hindi service, holds a Bengali library close in size to either of those, with one difference: it declares the Bengali audio track for nearly every title, which is something almost no other service bothers to do.
Ritwik Ghatak
Ray's contemporary, and the director Bengali cinephiles argue was the greater artist. Two of his films are on the Criterion Channel.
Meghe Dhaka Tara (1960). A refugee family near Calcutta after Partition, and the daughter who holds it together while her father cannot work and her brother postpones a career in music. Ghatak's own family was displaced by Partition and he never made a film about anything else, really. This is the one to start with.
Titash Ekti Nadir Naam (1973). Also on Eros Now. Life in a fishing community on the Titas river before independence, following a newlywed woman seized by river raiders and separated from her husband's village. Made in Bangladesh, from a Bengali novel, by a director from what became India. The film is about the river that does not care which side it is on.
The popular cinema of the sixties
Deya Neya (1963). ZEE5, Bengali confirmed; also on Prime Video and Eros Now. An industrialist's son walks out on the family business for music, moves to Calcutta and builds a secret singing career under another name while working as a driver for a rich household. A musical romance from the years when Bengali popular cinema was at its most confident, and a very good one.
Adaptations
Noukadubi (2011). ZEE5. Rituparno Ghosh, the finest Bengali director of the generation after Ray, adapting Tagore. 1920s Bengal, a law student pressed into marrying a stranger, a storm that wrecks the wedding boat, and the wrong bride rescued from the water.
The Japanese Wife (2010). To rent on Apple TV. Aparna Sen's film about a village schoolteacher who marries his Japanese pen pal by post and stays married to her for years without the two ever meeting. Quiet, and it stays with you.
From Bangladesh
Hawa (2022). Prime Video and ShemarooMe. Fishermen sail from Cox's Bazar on a routine trip and pull a young woman up in their net. Their luck vanishes. A mystery that becomes something older than a mystery, and the Bangladeshi film that travelled furthest in years.
What Kolkata is making now
The new Bengali thrillers arrive on ZEE5 within a few months of cinemas, with the Bengali track confirmed.
Bohurupi (2024). Based on a real string of bank robberies in rural West Bengal between 1998 and 2005: a wrongly accused man is brutalised in custody and comes out the other side as a master of disguise. A caper with a grudge.
Raktabeej 2 (2025). Two intelligence officers chase a terrorist network working across the India-Bangladesh border. The sequel to a hit, and a straightforward action thriller.
Projapoti 2 (2025). A widowed chef in London brings his daughter home to Kolkata for the holidays and his father, who runs a restaurant, has plans for him. Family drama for a festival evening.
Nari Choritro Bejay Jotil (2026). A young man living with his mother, sister and grandmother suddenly starts hearing what women are thinking. Fantasy comedy, and the newest Bengali film on any US service as I write.
Everything watchable, with the audio each service lists, is on the Bengali page.
