Bimal Roy’s Do Bigha Zamin to premiere in 4K at Venice Film Festival

Bimal Roy’s masterpiece, Do Bigha Zamin (1953), will receive its world premiere at the 2025 edition of the Venice Film Festival. The announcement coincides with the 116th birth anniversary of Bimal Roy, the visionary director who was at the forefront of the Golden Age of Indian Cinema during the 1950s and 1960s. The newly restored 4K version of the film will premiere at the festival.

The presentation in Venice will be led by members of the Bimal Roy family, his daughters Rinki Roy Bhattacharya and Aparajita Roy Sinha, his son Joy Bimal Roy, as well as Shivendra Singh Dungarpur, Director of the Film Heritage Foundation.

This landmark restoration is the result of a collaborative effort between not-for-profit organisation Film Heritage Foundation, The Criterion Collection and Janus Films. Do Bigha Zamin, celebrated as the first Indian film to win the prestigious Prix International at the Cannes Film Festival in 1954, also received honours at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival and secured both Best Film and Best Director Awards at the inaugural Filmfare Awards in India.

More about Do Bigha Zamin

Based on Rabindranath Tagore's Bengali poem "Dui Bigha Jomi" and Rickshawalla, a short story written by composer Salil Chowdhury, the film is considered one of the trend setters in the early parallel cinema of India.

The movie revolves around a farmer, Shambhu Maheto, who lives with his wife Parvati, son Kanhaiya and father Gangu in a small village and owns a small portion of land and has been harassed by a local landlord Thakur Harnam Singh, who wants to buy Shambhu's land in exchange of the money he has taken. To pay off his debts of Rs. 235, he sells off his household items, including his wife's gold earrings and goes to Calcutta (now Kolkata) and tries to earn money.

Directed by Roy, the movie stars Balraj Sahni, Nirupa Roy, Ratan Kumar, Murad, Nana Palsikar, Nasir Hussain, Rajlakshmi, Noorjahan, Nazir Hussain, Rekha, Mishra, Chitra and Jagdeep, Tiwari.

More about the restoration process

The restoration of Do Bigha Zamin has been an intricate process spanning over three years, initiated by The Criterion Collection and Janus Films in close partnership with the Film Heritage Foundation, beginning in 2022.