The profoundly moving story that unfolds in veteran Bengali director Goutam Ghose’s latest film Shankhachil is set in the present, but the disruption unleashed by the Radcliffe Line drawn in 1947 looms large over the narrative.
The film’s protagonist, played with consummate skill and empathy by Bengali cinema superstar Prosenjit Chatterjee, is a middle-aged schoolteacher in a small, idyllic hamlet on the banks of a river that separates West Bengal and Bangladesh.
With the wounds of Partition still festering in his heart and mind, this victim of history labours to impress upon his. . .