"I put in as much work on it as on three feature films," stated Ray of this documentary. It was commissioned by the Indian government to commemorate the centenary of the birth of Rabindranath Tagore, the 1913 Nobel Prize–winning poet, writer, and painter, in whose school the young Ray studied (and where he read his first books on cinema). Ray's approach to Tagore's biography combines a skillful use of documents with reconstructions involving actors.