Soumitra Chatterjee and Satyajit Ray: All 14 Films Together

From Apu to Feluda to the last family drama, every film they made together, in order

Soumitra Chatterjee acted in fourteen films directed by Satyajit Ray, from Apur Sansar in 1959 to Shakha Proshakha in 1990. He played a village husband, a taxi driver, a famine-era schoolteacher, a rebel teacher in a fairy-tale kingdom and, twice, the detective Feluda, and together those fourteen roles trace almost the whole of Ray's working life.

The partnership is often compared to the great director and actor pairings elsewhere in cinema. Wikipedia's entry on Soumitra Chatterjee puts it alongside Akira Kurosawa with Toshiro Mifune and Federico Fellini with Marcello Mastroianni. What follows is the full list of Soumitra Chatterjee and Satyajit Ray films in order, with what each one asked of him.

How it began

Soumitra Chatterjee was a radio announcer and stage actor when he first auditioned for Ray, for the adolescent Apu in Aparajito. Ray found him too old for that part. Two years later he remembered him for the grown Apu, and told him on the set of Jalsaghar, introducing him to Chhabi Biswas as the man playing Apu in his next film. His first shot was approved in a single take on 9 August 1958.

The fourteen films

Apur Sansar (1959). The last film of the Apu trilogy and Soumitra Chatterjee's first film of any kind. He plays Apu as a young man in Calcutta who marries by accident, loses his wife and has to learn to be a father. It was also Sharmila Tagore's first film, as Aparna. It won the National Film Award for Best Feature Film and the Sutherland Trophy at the London Film Festival in 1960.

Devi (1960). He plays Umaprasad, whose young wife Doyamoyee (Sharmila Tagore) is declared an incarnation of the goddess Kali by his father (Chhabi Biswas) after a dream. It is a small role set against a very large idea, and Francis Ford Coppola, as quoted in the film's Wikipedia entry, called it "a cinematic milestone".

Teen Kanya (1961). Ray's anthology of three Tagore stories, made in the poet's centenary year. Soumitra Chatterjee is Amulya in the third story, Samapti, opposite Aparna Sen as Mrinmoyee, a tomboy whose marriage to him begins in open hostility and ends in love.

Abhijan (1962). The furthest he travelled from the gentle Apu. He plays Narsingh, a proud Rajput taxi driver in a Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay story, with Waheeda Rehman in her first Bengali film. Ray wrote, scored and directed it, and it was shot mostly in Birbhum.

Charulata (1964). He is Amal, the young cousin whose visit to a Calcutta house in 1879 wakes the lonely wife Charu (Madhabi Mukherjee). It adapts Tagore's 1901 novella Nastanirh, won Ray the Silver Bear for Best Director at Berlin in 1965, and is the film Ray named as his own favourite.

Kapurush (1965). A short feature, paired on release with Mahapurush, from a story by Premendra Mitra. He plays Amitabha Ray, opposite Madhabi Mukherjee as Karuna.

Aranyer Din Ratri (1970). He is Ashim, one of four young men from Calcutta who spend a few days in the forest. The film adapts Sunil Gangopadhyay's novel and has one of Ray's best ensembles: Sharmila Tagore, Kaberi Bose, Aparna Sen, Simi Garewal, Rabi Ghosh, Subhendu Chatterjee and Samit Bhanja.

Ashani Sanket (1973). He plays Gangacharan, a Brahmin doctor and teacher in a village as the Bengal famine of 1943 arrives, from Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay's novel. It won the Golden Bear at Berlin in 1973, and Vincent Canby wrote in The New York Times that it has "the impact of an epic without seeming to mean to".

Sonar Kella (1974). The first Feluda film and the one that fixed Pradosh Chandra Mitra's face for a generation. Feluda follows a boy who says he remembers a past life to Jaisalmer, and the film introduced Santosh Dutta as Jatayu. It won National Film Awards for Best Direction and Best Screenplay among others.

Joi Baba Felunath (1979). Feluda again, this time in Varanasi during Durga Puja, where a golden Ganesh goes missing from a Bengali family's house. Utpal Dutt plays the villain Maganlal Meghraj, and it is the film to watch in October.

Hirak Rajar Deshe (1980). The sequel to Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne, spoken largely in rhyme. He plays Udayan Pandit, the schoolteacher who stands up to a king (Utpal Dutt) who brainwashes his subjects with rhyming slogans. It won three National Film Awards.

Ghare Baire (1984). From Tagore's 1916 novel. He plays Sandip, the fiery nationalist who unsettles the marriage of Nikhil (Victor Banerjee) and Bimala (Swatilekha Chatterjee). It competed at Cannes in 1984. Ray suffered two heart attacks during the shoot in 1983, and his son Sandip Ray completed it to his instructions. Pauline Kael wrote that its treatment of a woman's independence "shames the American and European directors of both sexes".

Ganashatru (1990). Ray's version of Ibsen's An Enemy of the People, moved to a Bengal temple town. He plays Dr Ashok Gupta, an honest doctor who diagnoses a public health crisis in a town that lives off its temple. It screened at Cannes in 1989 and opened in January 1990.

Shakha Proshakha (1990). The last of the fourteen. A retired industrialist falls ill and his four sons gather, and Soumitra Chatterjee plays Prasanta, the second son, as the family's hidden compromises come out. Ajit Banerjee, Haradhan Banerjee, Deepankar De, Ranjit Mallick and Mamata Shankar complete the family.

Which is his best Ray film

There is no agreed answer, and the honest approach is to say who thinks what. Ray himself named Charulata as his favourite of all his films. The Berlin juries gave Charulata the Silver Bear for Best Director and Ashani Sanket the Golden Bear. Coppola singled out Devi. If you want the range in two evenings, watch Apur Sansar and then Aranyer Din Ratri, eleven years apart and the same actor barely recognisable.

Feluda

Soumitra Chatterjee played Feluda in both of the Feluda films Ray directed, Sonar Kella and Joi Baba Felunath. Other actors took the part in later films and series by other directors, but his was the first Feluda on screen, and Ray made both films with him.

Aranyer Din Ratri, restored

Aranyer Din Ratri was restored in 4K in 2025 by The Film Foundation's World Cinema Project in collaboration with Film Heritage Foundation, with support from Wes Anderson. The restoration played in the Cannes Classics section of the 2025 Cannes Film Festival in May and in the revivals section of the New York Film Festival, and Janus Films released it in North America. Film International reported in March 2026 that it is headed for the Criterion Collection. The Times of India reported that the restored film returned to Indian cinemas in November 2025.

As of September 2026 JustWatch India lists no streaming, rental or purchase option for it in India; the only service it lists is the Criterion Channel, in the United States and Canada. The film's page on Cholochitro Diary carries dated streaming links as they appear.

Beyond Ray

The fourteen are not the whole of him. The same year as Devi he played the tax collector in Tapan Sinha's Kshudhita Pashan, from a Tagore story, and four decades later Rituparno Ghosh cast him as the father in Asukh. Soumitra Chatterjee received the Padma Bhushan in 2004 and the Dadasaheb Phalke Award in 2012. He died in Kolkata on 15 November 2020, at the age of 85.