Made in 1962 (but not released until 1965), Bengali director Ritwik Ghatak’s film starts soon after the 1947 partition of Bengal. At a socialist refugee colony, Ishwar (Abhi Bhattacharya) and his younger sister, Seeta, adopt a low-caste boy, Abhiram, who has been separated from his mother. To keep the two children from poverty, Ishwar abandons the colony to take an administrative job at an iron mill. Years pass. During one school vacation, the now-grown Seeta (Madhavi Mukherjee) and Abhiram (Satindra Bhattacharya) acknowledge their love for each other. Ishwar, turned grimly bourgeois, opposes their match, and his interference leads to disaster for all three.

An intense film of emphatic visual rhythms, Subarnarekha is composed mainly of short shots that suspend actors in close-to-middle camera space, creating uncomfortably direct images of crisis and confrontation. The plot moves farther and farther into poetic melodrama (including a brilliant alcoholic nightclub scene), finding room along the way for a stark, lyrical interlude in which the children discover an abandoned British airstrip. Add some of the most creative uses of music and sound in any film and you have a must-see.