"I wanted to say that we are all refugees, as we have all lost the roots of our life."-Ritwik GhatakGhatak takes a heartrending melodrama and turns it into a piercing political cry in Subarnarekha, a gorgeous film with an extraordinarily rich palette of visual and musical references. Ishwar (Abhi Battacharya) and his younger sister Sita (Madhabi Mukherjee) have the opportunity to escape a refugee camp when he is offered an industrial job on the banks of the river Subarnarekha. They take with them the orphan Abhiram, who becomes like a brother and, as they grow older, much more than that to Sita. The revelation of Abhiram's low-caste birth, however, crystallizes emotions, namely, Ishwar's now craven biases, and Sita's love. She follows the outcast Abhiram to Calcutta, where their lives end in tragedy. For Ghatak, these souls reduced to their purest misery are emblematic of the trail of human waste in a post-independence, growingly industrialized society. Redemption can only be personal, and it is a frail, almost imperceptable optimism with which this film ends.