No filmmaker's catalogue is as badly scattered across American streaming as Satyajit Ray's. The restored classics live on the services film people already have. The films he made for a Bengali audience, the detective stories and the children's fantasies, live on Indian services most Americans have never opened. And a surprising number of his best films are on nothing at all.
This is the map, built from what each service lists today. Availability changes, and the film pages linked below carry the current picture.
The Criterion Channel: the deepest shelf
If you want to actually work through Ray, this is the subscription. Criterion carries the Apu trilogy, Pather Panchali, Aparajito and Apur Sansar, and then keeps going: Jalsaghar, Devi, Teen Kanya, Mahanagar, Kapurush and its companion Mahapurush, Nayak, the Feluda mystery Joi Baba Felunath, The Home and the World, and the late An Enemy of the People. Also his 1961 documentary Rabindranath Tagore, 52 minutes, narrated by Ray himself.
That is fourteen films on one service. Nobody else comes close.
HBO Max: the trilogy and two more
HBO Max has the Apu trilogy, Jalsaghar and Mahanagar. If you already pay for it, that is the five most-taught Ray films without adding a subscription.
Free, with adverts or a library card
Aparajito is on Tubi, free. So is The Chess Players, Ray's one Urdu-Hindi film, set in Lucknow in 1856 as the East India Company moves on Awadh and two noblemen cannot be parted from their chessboard. Pather Panchali is on Kanopy, which is free with most public library cards, and on Fawesome with adverts.
The Bengali services: where the rest went
This is the part the American guides miss, and the part where we have to be careful about what we actually know. Eros Now and ZEE5 between them carry much of the rest of Ray: Charulata, which many people would name as his best film; Chiriyakhana, his Byomkesh Bakshi mystery; Distant Thunder, his film about the 1943 Bengal famine; the children's fantasy Hirak Rajar Deshe; and Sonar Kella, the first Feluda film.
Those are listings we have checked in India, not in the United States. We read both services from their own pages, and both publish an Indian catalogue; we have no way to see what either shows a subscriber in Chicago. Both sell to the diaspora, so these films may well be there — but an Indian listing is not an American one, and we would rather tell you we have not checked than let one stand in for the other.
Two of the five we can confirm for an American viewer, and both are under Rent or buy below: Charulata, on Apple TV and Prime Video, and Distant Thunder, on Prime Video. For Chiriyakhana, Hirak Rajar Deshe and Sonar Kella we have found no US service at all.
Sonar Kella is the one worth hunting for. ZEE5 lists it in India with the audio stated outright — Bengali, confirmed by the platform, which is more than most services tell us. A boy remembers a past life in a golden fortress, a parapsychologist takes him to Rajasthan to find it, and two con men follow. If you have children and one Ray film to show them, it is this one.
Rent or buy
Charulata and Nayak can be rented on Apple TV, and the Apu trilogy is on Apple TV and Prime Video to rent or buy. Prime's subscription also lists Pather Panchali, Apur Sansar and Mahanagar with a Bengali track, though Prime did not confirm the track and we have inferred it.
On nothing at all
We can find no US service for Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne, the musical fantasy that is the most-loved Ray film in Bengal. Nor for Days and Nights in the Forest, nor the Calcutta trilogy of Pratidwandi, Seemabaddha and Jana Aranya, nor Kanchanjangha, Abhijan, Parash Pathar, Shakha Proshakha or his last film, The Stranger. If you know where one of them is streaming, the film's page has a button for telling us.
Where to start
If you have seen nothing: Pather Panchali, and then keep going through the trilogy. If you have seen the trilogy: Charulata. If you want Ray at his most modern, Nayak, a film star and a journalist on an overnight train to Delhi. If you want to understand why Bengal loves him rather than why critics do, Sonar Kella.
