Sati (film)

Sati
File:Satishabana.jpg DVD cover
Directed by	Aparna Sen
Produced by	NFDC
Screenplay by	Aparna Sen Arun Banerjee
Story by	Kamal Kumar Majumdar
Starring	Shabana Azmi
Music by	Chidananda Das Gupta Chandan Raichaudhri
Cinematography	Ashok Mehta
Edited by	Shaktipada Roy
Release dates	23 November 1989 (1989-11-23) (India)
Running time	140 minutes
Country	India
Language	Bengali

Sati is a Bengali film released in 1989 written and directed by Aparna Sen. Based on a story by Kamal Kumar Majumdar, the film is about mute orphan girl who is married to a Banyan tree because her horoscope suggests that she would be a sati, and her husband would die. The film had Shabana Azmi and Arun Banerjee in lead roles.

Along with her previous films, Parama (1984), Aparna Sen became the first female director in Bengali cinema to explore gender issues and feminist perspective.

Synopsis

The young Brahmin girl (Shabana Azmi) in this story has a disastrous horoscope. In an Indian village in 1828, this can be a real handicap. The fact that she is mute only compounds her difficulties. Her horoscope predicts that she will become a widow at an early age. If this turns out as predicted, in addition to being bad luck for her prospective husbands, it is bad luck for her, as she will, according to the customs of the time, have to commit suttee, sati. That means she will have to be burned alive on her husband's funeral pyre. To avoid this fate, her family has hit upon the appealing strategem of having her marry a banyan tree.

Cast

• Shabana Azmi as ... Uma
• Arun Banerjee
• Kali Banerjee
• Pradip Mukherjee
• Arindam Ganguli
• Shakuntala Barua
• Laboni Sarkar

External links

• Sati at IMDb