# Meghe Dhaka Tara
**Meghe Dhaka Tara** (মেঘে ঢাকা তারা; English titles *The Cloud-Capped Star* and *Hidden Star*) is a 1960 Bengali-language drama directed by [Ritwik Ghatak](https://www.edgepedia.org/ritwik-ghatak), about the eldest daughter of a refugee family from East Bengal who sacrifices her own prospects to support her household in a Calcutta resettlement colony after the 1947 Partition[1](https://www.bengalfilmarchive.com/filmography-details.php?t=ODgz) • [2](https://www.encyclopedia.com/movies/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/meghe-dhaka-tara). It is widely regarded as Ghatak's best-known film and a key work of [Indian art](https://www.edgepedia.org/indian-art) cinema[3](https://doi.org/10.3828/liverpool/9781906733681.003.0005).
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Release | 14 April 1960, at the Sree, Prachi, and Indira cinemas; black-and-white, 13 reels, 35 mm[1](https://www.bengalfilmarchive.com/filmography-details.php?t=ODgz) |
| Director and writer | Ritwik Kumar Ghatak (scenario and screenplay), from a story by Shaktipada Rajguru[1](https://www.bengalfilmarchive.com/filmography-details.php?t=ODgz) |
| Production | Chitrakalpa; distributed by Janata Pictures and Theatres Ltd.[1](https://www.bengalfilmarchive.com/filmography-details.php?t=ODgz) |
| Principal cast | Supriya Choudhury (Nita), Anil Chatterjee (Shankar), Bijon Bhattacharya (the father), Gita Ghatak (Gita), Gita Dey (the mother), Niranjan Ray (Sanat)[4](https://tv.apple.com/in/movie/meghe-dhaka-tara/umc.cmc.4ipyy18x73c5hkgqr7ogabw2l) |
| Music | Jyotirindra Moitra; lyrics by Rabindranath Tagore; playback by A. T. Kanan, Debabrata Biswas, Gita Ghatak, and Ranendranarayan Chowdhury[1](https://www.bengalfilmarchive.com/filmography-details.php?t=ODgz) |
| Standing | Ranked =152 in the 2022 Sight and Sound critics' poll of the greatest films of all time[5](https://www.bfi.org.uk/film/d045be76-313c-5d66-8d25-6ed04f0f1183/meghe-dhaka-tara) |
| Trilogy position | First film of Ghatak's Partition trilogy, followed by *Komal Gandhar* (1961) and *Subarnarekha* (1965)[6](https://www.tbsnews.net/splash/rethinking-cloud-capped-star-through-industrial-lens-1139466) |
## Spoilers
### Story and characters
The film follows Nita (Supriya Choudhury), a young woman from a family of refugees from [East Pakistan](https://www.edgepedia.org/east-pakistan) who have settled on the outskirts of Calcutta[4](https://tv.apple.com/in/movie/meghe-dhaka-tara/umc.cmc.4ipyy18x73c5hkgqr7ogabw2l). Nita takes paid work to support her siblings and elderly father, giving up her own hopes, including her hope of marrying Sanat, a young scientist who turns instead to her sister Gita[4](https://tv.apple.com/in/movie/meghe-dhaka-tara/umc.cmc.4ipyy18x73c5hkgqr7ogabw2l). Her older brother Shankar (Anil Chatterjee) spends his days practicing classical Indian music and dreaming of becoming a great singer, encouraged by Nita, who believes him a genius[7](https://filozofia.uni-miskolc.hu/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/GaltRosalind-ShoonoverKarleds2010-GlobalArtCinema.NewTheoriesAndHistories.pdf).
As the demands of her family grow, Nita sacrifices her money, her happiness, and eventually her health, becoming the family's sole breadwinner while her achievements go unrecognized by those around her[8](https://www.the-criterion.com/V15/n2/IN23.pdf). She falls dangerously ill and becomes a burden on the family she supported[4](https://tv.apple.com/in/movie/meghe-dhaka-tara/umc.cmc.4ipyy18x73c5hkgqr7ogabw2l). In the film's closing movement, Shankar takes her to a sanatorium in the hills she has dreamt of visiting throughout the film, but it is too late to save her[7](https://filozofia.uni-miskolc.hu/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/GaltRosalind-ShoonoverKarleds2010-GlobalArtCinema.NewTheoriesAndHistories.pdf). Her final cry of anguish, the film's most famous moment, has been read as the resonant echo of millions of deracinated people, and especially women refugees, whose suffering in private domestic spaces was carried into the public sphere[8](https://www.the-criterion.com/V15/n2/IN23.pdf).
## Partition and the refugee family
The film is set among the displacement of peoples uprooted in the wake of India's partition following independence in 1947, and is woven around the life of a refugee family in a resettlement colony in Calcutta[2](https://www.encyclopedia.com/movies/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/meghe-dhaka-tara). Scholars read the household as a site where the losses of Partition are reproduced in miniature: Nita's paid work, unpaid care labor, and bodily exhaustion make Partition, class decline, and gendered exploitation visible, while the family reproduces material dependency through love, duty, and sacrifice[9](https://cinej.pitt.edu/ojs/cinej/article/view/1007).
**Tuberculosis as metaphor.** Nita's illness, tuberculosis, has been analyzed as a deliberate choice within the film's indices of loss designating the 1947 partition of the [Bengal Presidency](https://www.edgepedia.org/bengal-presidency); the illness had to be semiotically close to the other meanings and metaphors attached to Nita, functioning as both her tragedy and her salvation[10](https://intellectdiscover.com/content/journals/10.1386/safm_00036_1).
## Style and sound
Ghatak combines a realist surface, evoking the day-to-day life of a displaced lower-middle-class family in painstaking detail, with melodramatic excess, a modernist aesthetic of fragmentation, and regionally specific mythic and cultural references[7](https://filozofia.uni-miskolc.hu/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/GaltRosalind-ShoonoverKarleds2010-GlobalArtCinema.NewTheoriesAndHistories.pdf). Recurrent images include a large tree covering the entire frame, a stagnant shallow pond, and the monotony of the whistling suburban train passing through the meadows; in contrast to the train in [Satyajit Ray](https://www.edgepedia.org/satyajit-ray)'s *[Pather Panchali](https://www.edgepedia.org/pather-panchali)* (1955), Ghatak's train symbolizes the mundaneness of the machine era rather than a call to a distant world[11](https://www.the-criterion.com/V8/n2/IN06.pdf).
Sound carries much of the film's meaning. The National Film Archive of India notes that its popularity owed much to the music, especially a Baul (mystic wandering folk singers of Bengal) folk number evoking the legend of Durga, followed by snatches of folk songs calling Uma back to her home, khayal compositions, and a spectacularly filmed Tagore song, while recurring whiplash sounds in the background underscore the disillusionment of the self-sacrificing eldest daughter[12](https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/meghe-dhaka-tara-1960/BgHCgAVvT9lTSw?hl=en). Later scholarship identifies intrusive train sounds, a boiling-rice motif, shadowed interiors, and images of confinement as devices connecting domestic exploitation to the afterlives of Partition[13](https://cinej.pitt.edu/ojs/cinej/article/view/992).
## Reception and standing
*Meghe Dhaka Tara* is arguably the only one of Ghatak's films that enjoyed a measure of both commercial and critical success during his lifetime[7](https://filozofia.uni-miskolc.hu/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/GaltRosalind-ShoonoverKarleds2010-GlobalArtCinema.NewTheoriesAndHistories.pdf). It has been called one of the great classics of world cinema by the critic Adrian Martin and one of the five or six greatest melodramas in cinema history by Serge Daney[14](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/347705693_The_Cloud-Capped_Star_Meghe_Dhaka_Tara). In the 2022 [Sight and Sound](https://www.edgepedia.org/sight-and-sound) greatest-films poll it was ranked joint 152nd by critics, with votes from critics including Manishita Dass, Usha Iyer, and Ehsan Khoshbakht, and from director [Vidhu Vinod Chopra](https://www.edgepedia.org/vidhu-vinod-chopra)[5](https://www.bfi.org.uk/film/d045be76-313c-5d66-8d25-6ed04f0f1183/meghe-dhaka-tara).
**The Partition trilogy.** The film stands first in what is now called Ghatak's Partition trilogy, with *Komal Gandhar* (1961) and *Subarnarekha* (1965); the three films are not connected by plot or recurring characters, but each approaches the trauma of post-Partition refugees from East Bengal from a different emotional and social angle[6](https://www.tbsnews.net/splash/rethinking-cloud-capped-star-through-industrial-lens-1139466). Ghatak returned to the material and cultural energy of Bengal again after the birth of Bangladesh with *Titash Ekti Nadir Naam* (1972)[2](https://www.encyclopedia.com/movies/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/meghe-dhaka-tara).
## Restoration
Ghatak's entire feature filmography, including *Meghe Dhaka Tara*, has been restored in 4K by the National Film Development Corporation and the National Film Archive of India (NFDC-NFAI) in partnership with the [British Film Institute](https://www.edgepedia.org/british-film-institute), for a retrospective at BFI Southbank in London marking the centenary of Ghatak's birth[15](https://www.tbsnews.net/splash/ritwik-ghataks-entire-feature-filmography-restored-4k-be-screened-london-month-1453176).
## Production details and source discrepancies
The film was produced by Chitrakalpa from a story by the novelist Shaktipada Rajguru, who was encouraged to write by Sagar May Ghosh; the story reached Ghatak through the actress Supriya Devi and the cinematographer Dinen Gupta, and Ghatak converted it into the film[16](https://pagefournews.com/meghe-dhaka-tara-shaktipada-rajguru/). Credits differ slightly across archives: the Bengal Film Archive and the *Encyclopedia of Indian Cinema* credit Dinen Gupta as cinematographer[1](https://www.bengalfilmarchive.com/filmography-details.php?t=ODgz) • [17](https://indiancine.ma/documents/DSP/Encyclopedia%2520of%2520Indian%2520Cinema.pdf), while the National Film Archive of India's listing credits Dilip Ranjan Mukherjee[12](https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/meghe-dhaka-tara-1960/BgHCgAVvT9lTSw?hl=en). Reported running times also vary, from 134 minutes in the *Encyclopedia of Indian Cinema*[17](https://indiancine.ma/documents/DSP/Encyclopedia%2520of%2520Indian%2520Cinema.pdf) and 126 minutes in *Encyclopedia.com*[2](https://www.encyclopedia.com/movies/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/meghe-dhaka-tara) to 2 hours 14 minutes on Apple TV[4](https://tv.apple.com/in/movie/meghe-dhaka-tara/umc.cmc.4ipyy18x73c5hkgqr7ogabw2l), 2 hours 7 minutes on Rotten Tomatoes[18](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/meghe_dhaka_tara_1960), and 1 hour 58 minutes on the streaming service hoichoi[19](https://hoichoi.tv/bn/films/title/meghe-dhaka-tara-1960).
## References
1. [Meghe Dhaka Tara, Bengal Film Archive](https://www.bengalfilmarchive.com/filmography-details.php?t=ODgz)
2. [Meghe Dhaka Tara, Encyclopedia.com](https://www.encyclopedia.com/movies/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/meghe-dhaka-tara)
3. [Omar Ahmed, "The Trauma of Partition: Meghe Dhaka Tara," Studying Indian Cinema, Oxford Academic (2015)](https://doi.org/10.3828/liverpool/9781906733681.003.0005)
4. [Meghe Dhaka Tara, Apple TV](https://tv.apple.com/in/movie/meghe-dhaka-tara/umc.cmc.4ipyy18x73c5hkgqr7ogabw2l)
5. [Meghe Dhaka Tara (1960), British Film Institute](https://www.bfi.org.uk/film/d045be76-313c-5d66-8d25-6ed04f0f1183/meghe-dhaka-tara)
6. [Rethinking The Cloud-Capped Star through an industrial lens, The Business Standard](https://www.tbsnews.net/splash/rethinking-cloud-capped-star-through-industrial-lens-1139466)
7. [Rosalind Galt and Karl Schoonover, eds., Global Art Cinema: New Theories and Histories (2010)](https://filozofia.uni-miskolc.hu/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/GaltRosalind-ShoonoverKarleds2010-GlobalArtCinema.NewTheoriesAndHistories.pdf)
8. [The Criterion, Vol. 15, Issue II (April 2024)](https://www.the-criterion.com/V15/n2/IN23.pdf)
9. [Eşref Akmeşe and Alper Erçetingöz, "Between Marxist Melodrama and Left Melodrama," CINEJ Cinema Journal (2026)](https://cinej.pitt.edu/ojs/cinej/article/view/1007)
10. [Neha Gupta, "Trauma expressed pathologically: tuberculosis as a metaphor in Meghe Dhaka Tara," Studies in South Asian Film & Media 12(1) (2021)](https://intellectdiscover.com/content/journals/10.1386/safm_00036_1)
11. [The Criterion, Vol. 8, Issue II (April 2017)](https://www.the-criterion.com/V8/n2/IN06.pdf)
12. [Meghe Dhaka Tara (1960), National Film Archive of India at Google Arts & Culture](https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/meghe-dhaka-tara-1960/BgHCgAVvT9lTSw?hl=en)
13. [Ramazan Arslan, "Counter-Memory and Gendered Trauma in Ritwik Ghatak's Meghe Dhaka Tara," CINEJ Cinema Journal (2026)](https://cinej.pitt.edu/ojs/cinej/article/view/992)
14. [The Cloud-Capped Star [Meghe Dhaka Tara], ResearchGate](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/347705693_The_Cloud-Capped_Star_Meghe_Dhaka_Tara)
15. [Ritwik Ghatak's entire feature filmography restored in 4K, The Business Standard (2026)](https://www.tbsnews.net/splash/ritwik-ghataks-entire-feature-filmography-restored-4k-be-screened-london-month-1453176)
16. [শতবর্ষেও উপেক্ষিত 'মেঘে ঢাকা তারা'র লেখক শক্তিপদ রাজগুরু, PAGEFOUR](https://pagefournews.com/meghe-dhaka-tara-shaktipada-rajguru/)
17. [Encyclopedia of Indian Cinema (entry for Meghe Dhaka Tara)](https://indiancine.ma/documents/DSP/Encyclopedia%2520of%2520Indian%2520Cinema.pdf)
18. [Meghe Dhaka Tara (1960), Rotten Tomatoes](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/meghe_dhaka_tara_1960)
19. [মেঘে ঢাকা তারা (1960), hoichoi](https://hoichoi.tv/bn/films/title/meghe-dhaka-tara-1960)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Indian films (individual works) › Films in other Indian languages*
*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
*Copyright 2026 EdgeChat AI, a subsidiary of Biostate AI.*
License: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license