The Bong Connection

2006. India. Written and directed by Anjan Dutt. With Shayan Munshi, Raima Sen, Parambrata Chatterjee, Victor Banerjee. Dutt's utterly endearing and smart satire follows the parallel stories of two young Indian men who have difficulty adjusting to life and love in a new country: one a charismatic Indian musician from New York who moves to Kolkata to discover his cultural roots, and the other a conservative but ambitious Bengali computer technician who seizes a job opportunity in Houston. An award-winning actor, singer-songwriter, and journalist, Dutt brings warmth, humor, and subtlety to his tales of the Indian diaspora, and offers a touching homage to Satyajit Ray in his expert use of traditional and fusion music (the clash of Old and New World cultures) and his casting of Soumitra Chatterjee, the original Apu, as a dying patriarch. New York premiere. In Bengali, English subtitles. 110 min.