Satyajit Ray Trivia
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60 free Satyajit Ray trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Satyajit Ray made 36 films, wrote detective stories and science fiction for children, designed typefaces, illustrated books, edited a magazine and composed his own film scores. This quiz covers all of it: his grandfather's printing press and his father's nonsense verse, the advertising job and the London trip that turned him into a filmmaker, the two-and-a-half-year struggle to finish Pather Panchali, the Golden Lion for Aparajito, Jalsaghar, Charulata, the Goopy–Bagha films, the Calcutta trilogy, The Chess Players, and the Honorary Oscar he accepted from his hospital bed weeks before he died. Easy questions ask which city he was born in and what the Apu Trilogy is; harder ones cover the amateur cast of his first film, the cinematographer who invented bounce lighting, the address of Feluda, the name of Professor Shonku's cat, and the story of The Alien script that Ray believed found its way into E.T. It is written for film students, fans of Indian cinema, Bengali readers who grew up on Sandesh, and quiz setters who want a world-cinema round that goes deeper than one director's name. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia articles on Ray, his films and his fictional characters, and each question shows its source once you have answered.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Ganashatru (1989), Ray's film about a doctor at war with his town's leaders, is his version of which Ibsen play?
An Enemy of the People
An Enemy of the People moves to a Bengal town where the doctor traces an epidemic to a temple's holy water; the men who profit from its pilgrims wreck his public meeting and turn the crowd on him.
Q 02Ray's father Sukumar Ray was famous in Bengal as a pioneering writer of what?
Nonsense rhyme for children
Nonsense rhyme for children made his Abol Tabol a Bengali classic; he died when Satyajit was two, and in 1987 the son filmed a documentary tribute for his father's birth centenary.
Q 03What was the name of the family children's magazine, founded in 1913, that Ray revived in 1961?
Sandesh
Sandesh stayed in Ray's hands for life: he edited it until his death in 1992, drew and wrote for it, and invented his detective Feluda for its young readers.
Q 04In which town did Satyajit Ray study fine art from 1940, at the university founded by the poet of Gitanjali?
Santiniketan
Santiniketan was his mother's idea and Ray went reluctantly; yet his teacher there, the painter Benode Behari Mukherjee, marked him so deeply that Ray filmed a documentary about him 30 years later.
Q 05What subject did Ray complete his bachelor's degree in at Presidency College, Calcutta?
Economics
Economics was the degree, but Ray wanted no more study: at 18 he meant to work as a commercial artist, until his mother, thinking him too young for a job, pressed him to go to art school.
Q 06In 1943 Ray started as a junior visualiser at D.J. Keymer, which was what kind of business?
A British advertising agency
A British advertising agency employed Ray for 13 years: it sent him to its London office in 1950, and he left only when the success of Pather Panchali let him make films full time.
Q 07Who wrote the novel Pather Panchali, which Satyajit Ray adapted as his first film?
Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay
Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay's novel reached Ray as a commission: he illustrated an abridged edition in 1944, and the job set him thinking about the book as a film.
Q 08Which French director, visiting Calcutta in 1949 for his film The River, encouraged Ray to film Pather Panchali?
Jean Renoir
Jean Renoir needed locations for The River, and Ray spent weekends helping him scout the countryside; asked whether he meant to make films himself, Ray outlined Pather Panchali.
Q 09Which Italian neorealist film, seen in London in 1950, made Ray determined to become a filmmaker?
Bicycle Thieves
Bicycle Thieves, one of about a hundred films Ray saw on that business trip, convinced him a feature could be shot on real locations with amateur actors, the method he then used for Pather Panchali.
Q 10Which organisation did Ray found in 1947 with Chidananda Dasgupta to study foreign films?
The Calcutta Film Society
The Calcutta Film Society was Ray's film school: he studied the foreign films it screened and, for practice, wrote his own screenplays of stories being filmed, then compared them with what reached the screen.
Q 11Besides being sweethearts, what was Ray's relationship to Bijoya Das before their marriage?
They were first cousins
They were first cousins who lived under one roof in their uncle's Calcutta house in their youth; a shared taste for films and music drew them together.
Q 12What was pawned to keep Pather Panchali shooting when its first producer could pay no more?
Ray's wife's jewellery
Ray's wife's jewellery was not enough: he had already borrowed against his life insurance, and once the funds were gone the shoot stood still for almost a year.
Q 13Which American director saw unfinished Pather Panchali footage in India and hailed 'a great film-maker'?
Q 21Which two actors, later Ray regulars, made their debuts in Apur Sansar?
Soumitra Chatterjee and Sharmila Tagore
Soumitra Chatterjee and Sharmila Tagore were a radio announcer and a 14-year-old with no acting experience; Ray had to shout instructions to her during takes, yet both became stars.
Q 22In Ray's Mahanagar (1963), what job does the housewife Arati take, against her in-laws' wishes?
Door-to-door saleswoman
Door-to-door saleswoman Arati thrives at the work and becomes the family's only earner when her husband loses his bank job, then resigns in protest when a colleague is unjustly sacked.
Q 23Jalsaghar (The Music Room, 1958) is about the decline of which class of Bengali society?
John Huston
John Huston was in India scouting locations for The Man Who Would Be King, which he did not get to film until 1975; shown a silent rough cut of about 20 minutes, he sent back a rave report.
Q 14Who finally provided the loan that allowed Ray to complete Pather Panchali?
The West Bengal government
The West Bengal government mistook the film for a documentary and filed its loan under roads, a nod to a title that means Song of the Little Road.
Q 15Who composed the score for Pather Panchali and the rest of the Apu Trilogy?
Ravi Shankar
Ravi Shankar, squeezed by a touring schedule, saw only about half of Pather Panchali and then recorded most of its score in a single overnight session of about eleven hours.
Q 16What is the name of Apu's elder sister in Pather Panchali?
Durga
Durga steals fruit for old Indir and looks after her little brother; she catches a fever after playing in a monsoon downpour and dies, the loss that drives the family from the village.
Q 17Which award did Pather Panchali win at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival?
Best Human Document
Best Human Document came despite a thinly attended Cannes screening: the critics who did see the film championed it, and the award opened Western cinemas to it.
Q 18Which French New Wave director reportedly dismissed Pather Panchali as a film of 'peasants eating with their hands'?
François Truffaut
François Truffaut's reported jibe was not the only doubt: the New York Times critic Bosley Crowther found the film loosely built and a test of patience, yet it ran for eight months at one New York cinema.
Q 19Aparajito (1956), the second Apu film, won the top prize at which festival?
Venice
Venice gave Aparajito the Golden Lion in 1957, and a question put to Ray there about a third film prompted him to round the story off as a trilogy.
Q 20In Apur Sansar, how does Apu come to marry Aparna?
He replaces a groom found insane
He replaces a groom found insane on the wedding day: the villagers believe the bride must marry within the auspicious hour or never, so Apu, there only as a guest, agrees out of sympathy.
The zamindars (landlords)
The zamindars (landlords) are embodied in Biswambhar Roy, who squanders his dwindling fortune on concerts in his music room rather than be outdone by his neighbour.
Q 24Which sitar maestro composed the music for Ray's Jalsaghar (1958)?
Ustad Vilayat Khan
Ustad Vilayat Khan was one of three classical maestros Ray hired in his first years; finding their loyalty lay with the music rather than the film, he began composing his own scores in 1961.
Q 25In Ray's 1960 film set in rural Bengal, a father-in-law comes to treat his young daughter-in-law as what?
A goddess
A goddess is what the title, Devi, means and what he sees in her after a dream of Kali: he has her worshipped, and her sick little nephew, left in her care instead of a doctor's, dies.
Q 26Which of Ray's shorter films did the Indian government ban in 1975 and release from the ban only in 2010?
Sikkim
Sikkim was commissioned by the Himalayan kingdom's own king, who then made Ray drop shots he disliked; when the kingdom merged with India in 1975, the Indian government banned the film.
Q 27Ray's first colour film, Kanchenjungha (1962), is set during one afternoon in which hill town?
Darjeeling
Darjeeling's weather is part of the plot: Ray scripted the afternoon to run from sunlight through cloud and mist to a clear view of the peak, with the family's quarrels timed to the changing light.
Q 28Satyajit Ray's Charulata (1964) is based on the story Nastanirh by which author?
Rabindranath Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore's story Nastanirh (The Broken Nest) tells of a neglected wife who falls for her husband's young cousin; Ray called Charulata the one film he would make the same way again.
Q 29Charulata earned Ray which prize at the 15th Berlin International Film Festival?
Silver Bear for Best Director
Silver Bear for Best Director went to a film that opens almost without words: the lonely Charu drifts from window to window, watching the street through opera glasses.
Q 30Nayak (1966), starring Uttam Kumar as a matinée idol confiding in a journalist, takes place mostly on what?
A train
A train carries the star overnight from Calcutta to Delhi to collect an award; a young journalist coaxes out his fears and regrets, then tears up her notes to protect his image.