With her sophomore feature, Phera (Return, 2026), independent Bengali filmmaker Pritha Chakraborty continues her emotional exploration of ordinary lives, turning her gaze towards fatherhood, aging and the fragile ties that bind families together. The film offers a delicate portrait of a working-class Bengali life, and follows two characters from a small town in Bengal who struggle to express what they truly feel for each other. At Phera’s center is the relationship between an aging father and his middle-aged son, with the tensions between them emerging gradually through understated moments of everyday domestic life. In these quiet exchanges, years of unspoken disappointments, affection and regret gently rise to the surface.

Phera premiered theatrically in Kolkata on May 29, 2026, followed by a nationwide release on June 11, 2026. In this conversation, Chakraborty reflects on the impulses behind her film, its exploration of male vulnerabilities and her interest in the quiet revelations of everyday life.

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Dipankar Sarkar: Your 2019 debut, Mukherjee Dar Bou (Mr. Mukherjee’s Wife), explores two women’s emotional worlds. With Phera, you’ve shifted your focus to men, particularly a father and son, who are unable to put their feelings into words. What interested you about exploring male vulnerability this time?

Pritha Chakraborty: Phera emerged from a deeply personal place. A few years ago, I had to bring my father from our hometown, Ranaghat, to live with me in a small apartment in Kolkata because of recurring medical emergencies. At the time, I was consumed by the practicalities of caregiving. It took me a long while to realize that while his body needed to be in the city, his heart was still in the home he had left behind.

What he was grieving wasn’t something visible or easy to articulate. It wasn’t just a house; it was a lifetime of routines, memories, relationships and the quiet comfort of belonging. It’s an emotion that is almost impossible to put into words, yet so many people experience it when they leave their roots behind.

As a filmmaker, I became interested in exploring that feeling through two men living under the same roof. In our society, men are often raised to suppress vulnerability, and struggle to express love, grief or fear. I wanted to observe what happens when two people, equally unequipped to communicate their emotions, are forced to share the same space. For me, Phera is not simply about a father and a son — it is about the silences between them, and how those silences sometimes reveal more than words ever could.

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DS: Much of Phera unfolds through seemingly mundane moments rather than dramatic confrontations. What do those quiet, everyday interactions allow you to reveal about your characters?

PC: I believe we reveal far more about ourselves in ordinary, everyday moments than we do in life’s big confrontations. Human behavior fascinates me because the smallest gestures often carry the deepest truths. Something as simple as the way we sip a cup of tea changes depending on who is sitting across from us — someone we love, someone we fear, someone we resent. Without a single line of dialogue, our bodies betray our inner world. As a filmmaker, I find those unconscious gestures infinitely more compelling than dramatic declarations.

I’m drawn to stories that move in circles rather than straight lines. My characters often begin and end in seemingly the same place, but they are never the same person. The transformation is internal — a subtle shift in perception rather than circumstance. What interests me is not the spectacle of change, but the quiet accumulation of everyday experiences that gradually alter how someone sees themselves and the world around them. For me, cinema has the unique ability to make the mundane feel profound, and it is within those seemingly insignificant moments that I find the deepest emotional truths.

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DS: The idea of home runs through the entire film, and each character seems to define it differently. Pannalal clings to a house that is literally falling apart, while Palash dreams of buying a modern apartment of his own. What did these contrasting living spaces allow you to explore about the father-son dynamic?

PC: For me, the house in Phera is never just a physical space — it is an emotional landscape.

Pannalal’s home is built on memory, routine and belonging. It is where he feels seen, where his relationships and identity have taken shape over a lifetime. Leaving it would mean losing a part of himself.

For Palash, home is about aspiration. A modern apartment represents security, independence and the possibility of a better future. His desire to move on isn’t a rejection of his roots; it’s a reflection of the world his generation has inherited.

What interested me was that both father and son are searching for the same thing — a place where they feel they belong — but they define home very differently. Through that contrast, I wanted to explore not just a generational conflict, but the changing idea of home in contemporary society.

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DS: There’s a striking exchange where Pannalal questions whether all of Palash’s careful planning has really brought him happiness. It reflects on how we measure success in contemporary society. Was that something you were interested in exploring?

PC: At its emotional core, Phera is about the relationship between a father and a son. But for me, that relationship became a lens through which to explore the times we are living in.

We are all on an outward journey — moving from villages to small towns, from small towns to metropolitan cities, and often from there to other countries. It is almost as if movement itself has become our definition of progress. Yet we rarely pause to ask, “What is the emotional cost of that journey? What parts of ourselves do we leave behind in the pursuit of a better life?”

I was never interested in making Palash an idealized protagonist. I completely understand why he doesn’t want to become another Ananda, why he envies the success of his friends and why he aspires to a different life. Those contradictions don’t diminish him; they make him profoundly human.

The same is true of Pannalal. For him, home is not simply a physical structure. It is a place where he is known, where people greet him by name, where his opinions still carry weight, where he continues to feel visible. One could argue that his reluctance to leave is selfish, but if we inhabit his perspective, it becomes deeply heartbreaking.

Ultimately, Phera is less about a father and a son than about a society in transition. Through their relationship, I wanted to explore how ordinary people negotiate change, displacement, aspiration and belonging through a rapidly changing world.

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DS: Snigdha keeps one of the rooms of her rented apartment permanently locked. For her, it is a repository of memory and grief. What drew you to using that space to reveal so much about her inner life?

PC: After losing my father, I experienced grief in a way I had never understood before. What surprised me was how deeply I began to hold on to his belongings — as if they still carried a part of him. I still have the old briefcase he used every day. Inside are the most ordinary things: a razor, medicines, an inhaler with the last capsules he used. I keep it like a treasure, yet I rarely have the courage to open it. It may sound irrational, but grief often is.

That experience shaped Snigdha. I wanted to explore how people hold on not only to memories, but also to objects, believing they preserve something that would otherwise disappear. For Snigdha, those accumulated belongings become her idea of home — a private space where she can be vulnerable, away from the composed, resilient version of herself that the world expects. Even the old keypad phones and inhalers in her drawer are emotional relics rather than mere objects.

I think Pannalal quietly gives her back a sense of home in the present. And perhaps that is why, by the end, she finds the strength to let go — not just of those objects, but of old wounds, regrets and the weight of a past she has been carrying for far too long.

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DS: Sanjay Mishra brings tremendous warmth and vulnerability to Pannalal. What convinced you he was the right actor for a role that also marked his first performance in Bengali cinema?

PC: The answer is actually quite simple. Before I knew him personally, I wanted to cast him because of the extraordinary actor he is.

In my mind, Pannalal was never meant to be an idealized father. He is eccentric, outspoken and stubborn, but beneath that exterior lies a deeply insecure and vulnerable man. The same is true of Palash. Neither of them is heroic in the conventional sense; they are full of contradictions, and I believe it is those contradictions that make them feel profoundly human.

One of my favorite performances by Sanjay Mishra is in Masaan [2015]. The way he embodied vulnerability and contradiction in that film stayed with me for years. It transcended language. That is why I was never worried about him not speaking Bengali. I knew that, as an actor, he would inhabit Pannalal far beyond words. What he ultimately brought to the character was even richer than what I had imagined on the page.

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DS: At the same time, Ritwick Chakraborty’s performance captures a generation caught between ambition and responsibility. What conversations did you have with him about understanding Palash beyond the surface?

PC: The wonderful thing about working with Ritwick Chakraborty is that Phera is our second collaboration. Over time, we’ve developed a shared language. I have a fairly intuitive sense of how to communicate with him, and he understands the kind of emotional truth I’m looking for.

It also helped that we both come from small towns. In many ways, we’ve lived versions of Palash’s life, and perhaps we both still carry a part of him within us.

Our conversations were never about how to perform a particular scene. They were always about understanding who Palash is — what he is capable of, what he isn’t, what he would feel and, more importantly, what he would never express.

I remember the scene towards the end of the film, when Palash tells Pannalal that he is no longer buying the apartment. We both felt that even in that moment, Palash wouldn’t suddenly become emotionally articulate. He would remain hesitant, unable to fully meet his father’s gaze, still unsure of how to navigate emotions he has spent a lifetime suppressing. That restraint felt more truthful than any dramatic outpouring.

Ritwick is an extraordinary actor — that hardly needs saying. But what I value most is his deep empathy for people. He observes life with remarkable sensitivity, and I think that is what makes his performances feel so organic and lived-in.

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DS: The camera pays as much attention to the spaces the characters inhabit as it does to the characters themselves. How closely did you work with your cinematographer to make those spaces feel like extensions of the people who live in them?

PC: Exactly. From the very beginning, we wanted the camera to observe not just the characters, but the relationship between the characters, the spaces they inhabit and the time they are living through. For us, those elements were inseparable.

Whether it was Palash’s apartment in South Kolkata, the narrow lanes of North Kolkata, people dozing off in crowded buses, Pannalal’s crumbling ancestral home or the quiet rhythms of the small town itself, we wanted every space to be observed with the same honesty as the people within it.

My cinematographer, Subhankar Bhar, has a remarkable ability to capture reality in its most organic form. Our conversations were rarely about framing or lighting in isolation. Instead, we spoke about the larger emotional canvas — who these people are, what they are carrying within them and how their inner lives are reflected in the spaces they occupy.

We both believed the camera should remain almost invisible — never announcing itself, but gently immersing the audience in the world of the film. One of the things I admire most about Subhankar is the way he becomes part of the mise en scène itself. His camera doesn’t observe from a distance; it quietly lives with the characters, allowing authenticity to emerge rather than be imposed. For me, that invisible presence is what gives Phera its visual truth.

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DS: Despite being a trained editor, you’ve consistently entrusted the editing of your films to someone else. How has that collaboration influenced the way you approach your work as a director?

PC: Editing is probably the most difficult collaboration for me, precisely because I think like an editor even when I’m directing. While I’m shooting, I’m already assembling the film in my mind. I instinctively know which small gesture, glance or pause might find its place elsewhere in the edit. And because of my background as an editor, I’m constantly thinking about how the juxtaposition of images creates emotion.

Perhaps that’s also why I chose not to edit Phera myself. I was afraid of becoming confined to my own interpretation of the footage. I wanted someone else to challenge my instincts and discover possibilities I might have overlooked.

This is my second collaboration with my editor, Subhajit Singha, and what makes it work is our shared understanding of what collaboration truly means. Neither of us is interested in proving ourselves right. The film always comes first. That trust allows us to disagree, experiment and remain open to each other’s ideas without ego getting in the way.

Over time, we’ve developed a workflow that suits both of us. I come in with a very clear emotional map of the material, while Subhajit often helps me see it from a fresh perspective.

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DS: Looking at your first two features, there’s a clear interest in how relationships evolve under changing circumstances. Do you see yourself continuing to explore that territory, or are there other stories calling out to you?   

PC: I think every story is, at its heart, a relationship story. The genre, the setting, even the plot may change, but what ultimately interests me is the space between people — how they love, misunderstand, protect, lose and rediscover one another. That has naturally found its way into my first two features.

Having said that, I don’t consciously set out to make films about a particular relationship. I begin with a question that stays with me, something I don’t fully understand as a person. Cinema becomes my way of exploring it. Through that process, relationships inevitably emerge because they are where our inner worlds are most honestly revealed.

I’m not yet certain what form my next film will take, but I know it will continue to explore another layer of human relationships. I think that curiosity will probably remain the emotional thread running through all my work. It is less about repeating the same territory and more about discovering new ways of understanding what it means to be human.

Dipankar Sarkar (@Dipankar_Tezpur) is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic based in India. As a freelancer, he regularly contributes to various Indian publications on cinema-related topics.

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