Ghatak drew on his own experiences as a young dramatist in the 1950s--when he traveled from village to village with a radical theater troupe--to create this portrait of a young man whose mission in life is to reach the people through his People's Theater Group. A refugee from Bangladesh who seeks the meaning of patriotism in a partitioned country, he finds his soul-mate in an actress, Anasuya, who also lives with her memories of a childhood in East Bengal. E Flat is a more experimental work than previous films by Ghatak; Derek Malcolm in Sight and Sound calls it “a considerable achievement...and once again, the soundtrack has bold and surprising felicities.”