Bondhu

In these recollections, Kunal Sen, son of actor Gita Sen and filmmaker Mrinal Sen, channels, with an equal measure of reflection, the great raconteurs among whom he grew up. Just as Kunal was breaking through the veneer of childhood, his father’s cinematic celebrity was reaching new heights at home and the world.

Celebrating Mrinal Sen’s birth centenary in 2023, Bondhu takes us on an intimate journey of a son attempting to reconcile his father’s public and private selves—growing up in a middle-class household in South Calcutta, where his father's Marxist beliefs and unrelenting urge ‘to be challenged and contradicted’ often collided with the practical challenges of making a living. And through it all, the family’s unyielding commitment to the craft of cinema, the risks they took and their endearing sense of humour.