Meghe Dhaka Tara

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Meghe Dhaka Tara

Directed by	Ritwik Ghatak
Produced by	Chitrakalpa
Written by	Ritwik Ghatak (screenplay),Shaktipada Rajguru(the original novel)
Starring	Supriya Choudhury, Anil Chatterjee, Niranjan Ray, Gita Ghatak, Bijon Bhattacharya, Gita Dey, Dwiju Bhawal, Gyanesh Mukherjee, Ranen Ray Choudhury
Release date(s)	1960
Running time	134 min.
Language	Bangla
IMDb profile

A screenshot

Meghe Dhaka Tara (Bengali: মেঘে ঢাকা তারা) (The Cloud-Capped Star) is a 1960 film by director Ritwik Ghatak. It starred Supriya Choudhury, Anil Chatterjee, Gita Ghatak, Bijan Bhattacharya, Niranjan Roy, and Gyanesh Mukherjee.

This film was directed by alternative filmmaker Ritwik Ghatak in Kolkata (then Calcutta). In contrast to many Bollywood films made in Mumbai, India's main film center, Ghatak's films are realistic and somber, and often address issues related to the Partition of India. Although Partition is never explicitly mentioned in Meghe Dhaka Tara, it takes place in a refugee camp in the outskirts of Calcutta, and concerns an impoverished genteel Hindu bhadralok family and the problems they face because of Partition.

The film is perhaps the most widely viewed film among Ghatak's works; it was his greatest commercial success at home, and coincided with an international film movement towards personal stories and innovative techniques (the so-called 'new wave'). After Ghatak's death, his work (and this film in particular) began to attract a more sizable global audience, via film festivals and the subsequent release of DVDs both in India and in Europe.

In a confirmation of the popularity of Meghe Dhaka Tara, a recent survey by a leading Indian news group reported that the concluding line of the film, "Dada, ami baachte chai" ("Brother, I want to live") was the most well-known line of any film^{[citation needed]}.

Meghe Dhaka Tara has been termed by many as an extremely manipulative experiment in cinema, in terms of content and technique. The levels of suffering heaped upon the protagonist, and the obscurity she endures are severely melodramatic, and the cinematic technique employed to achieve the same have been severely criticised.