Ghatashraddha (The Ritual, 1977), a film based on U.R. Ananthamurthy’s Kannada novella, marked the arrival of Girish Kasaravalli, who, as part of New Indian Cinema, went on to direct internationally acclaimed Kannada masterpieces exemplifying cinema that was at once personal and radical. For Kasaravalli, cinema has been a way of responding to ideas that bothered him deeply.

Set in a south Indian Brahminic society, Ghatashraddha tells the story of a young widow whose father rejects her when she becomes pregnant through nothing less than the rituals for the dead. The film, like Ananthamurthy’s Samskara (1970), reflects the rigidity of tradition that sanctions oppression based on gender and caste, which it captures with solemnity.

The national-award-winning film has been restored by The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project and Film Heritage Foundation at L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory in association with Girish Kasaravalli and funding from the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation. It gathered much acclaim at its 2024 Venice Film Festival world premiere in September.