Satyajit Ray was an Indian filmmaker, writer, music director, and illustrator, considered among the greatest auteur-directors of 20th-century cinema, along with the likes of Akira Kurosawa, Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, and Andrei Tarkovsky. Born into an illustrious family of intellectuals who epitomized the high point of the late 19th-century Bengal Renaissance, Ray studied economics and fine arts before going on to join the British advertising firm D. J. Keymer in 1943, where he worked as visual designer.