Pather Panchali is a magical work, both for its capacity to move audiences and for its historical role. It’s one of the most important debuts in film history, made by a first-time director with a crew of virtually no filmmaking experience, took over three years to complete, on a shoestring, and, on completion, shook the world. It’s not an overstatement to say that world cinema was not the same again after Pather Panchali. Yet the film remains a profoundly touching work over half a century later. The simple beauty of the images, the mesmerizing rhythm of the lives chronicled the mystical pathos of the story… Magical.