In 1950 a junior employee at a Calcutta advertising agency was sent to London for six months, watched 99 films, and walked out of Vittorio De Sica's Bicycle Thieves determined to make a movie. This episode traces the life of Satyajit Ray, born in 1921 into a family of Bengali intellectuals, grandson of printing pioneer Upendrakishore Ray Chowdhury and son of nonsense poet Sukumar Ray. We follow his fine art studies at Rabindranath Tagore's university, his work designing book covers, including an illustrated edition of Pather Panchali, and his location-scouting conversations with Jean Renoir that encouraged him to direct.

We go inside the two-and-a-half-year production of Pather Panchali, shot with no written script, a 21-year-old still photographer as cinematographer, amateur actors, and Ray's own savings, and his refusal of every producer  ...