The Voyage Beyond

Directed by Gautam Ghose, Antarjali Jatra is a Bengali drama film released in the year 1989. The film is based on a novel named “Mahayatra” written by Kamal Kumar Majumdar. The film stars Basanta Choudhury, Shatrughan Sinha, Shampa Ghosh, Promode Ganguly and Rabi Ghosh. The storyline of this film represents evil practices like Polygamy and Sati that used to happen in Kulin Brahminism. The story depicts how a father makes his daughter marry a dying man to inherit his wealth. What happens next is that she is expected to die in a funeral pyre of her husband as the practice of Sati. An astrologer told the man’s family that her wife needs to die so that the man can attain peace after his death. But a drunkard man stands against the Sati system and stops the evil practice. The film was screened in the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival. It also gained the National Film Award for the Best Feature Film in Bengali.