Taken together, these two Devis form a complete picture of Indian womanhood: the burden of divinity and the brutality of reality. They remind us that to call a woman a goddess is often just a prettier way of silencing her. The true reverence, both films argue, would be to see her as human first. Whether you watch Ray’s lyrical, devastating classic or Banerjee’s fierce, compact cry of rage — or both — you’ll never hear the word ‘Devi’ the same way again.
In Indian cinema, few titles carry as much symbolic weight as Devi (Goddess). The word evokes reverence, power, and the divine feminine. Yet, when used as a film title, it becomes a razor-sharp critique of how society worships women as symbols while denying them their humanity. Two landmark Indian films — Satyajit Ray’s 1960 Bengali classic Devi and Priyanka Banerjee’s 2020 Hindi short film Devi — use the same title to expose different but equally devastating facets of patriarchal idolatry. Satyajit Ray’s Devi (1960): The Tragedy of Blind Faith Ray’s Devi is a haunting slow-burn tragedy set in 19th-century rural Bengal. It follows Doyamoyee (the ethereal Sharmila Tagore), the young wife of a progressive, western-educated man. Her father-in-law, a feudal landlord, has a dream in which the goddess Kali declares that Doyamoyee is her earthly incarnation. What begins as an old man’s fervent delusion soon turns into a village-wide cult of worship. indian movie devi
Devi remains radical for its time: a searing indictment of superstition, but more deeply, of how patriarchy uses spirituality to control women. Doyamoyee is never asked if she wants to be a goddess. Her consent is irrelevant. Her suffering is the price of others’ faith. Nearly sixty years later, Banerjee’s short film Devi (streaming on Netflix) updates the metaphor for urban, modern India. The film unfolds entirely in a single police station on a single night. Nine women — from a maid and a college student to a sex worker and a Muslim mother — wait to file complaints of harassment, assault, and domestic violence. They are strangers, from different classes and religions, but they share one thing: men have treated them as less than human. Taken together, these two Devis form a complete