Ritwik Ghatak was an Indian Bengali filmmaker who, along with filmmakers like Satyajit Ray and Mrinal Sen, is known as one of the proponents of Indian parallel cinema or the Indian New Wave. His work was shaped by a host of influences – including the left-leaning Indian People's Theater Association (IPTA), Indian mythologies, modernist playwright Bertolt Brecht, and the Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein – that inform the staging of modernist melodrama representing the recurring themes of post-colonial modernity, alienation, and displacement in his works.