Private Project

The Exile

The film tells the story of Gouranga, a young man from a village in Bengal who has lost his wife recently. This loss is not only looming large on the family, which has been through a series of tragedies over the years, but also personally on Gouranga’s mind as he is not able to come to terms with his wife’s death. Eventually Gouranga embarks on a journey, where he is able to confront not only his own demons, but also comes across certain myths based in these rural settings, which border on the supernatural. The film is set in the late 1960s and deals with themes like loss, superstitions, sexual deviance, the supernatural as well as the role of the female in a society which at that time, was at a crossroad of the waning, age-old traditional belief systems and the ushering of postmodern thoughts and politics.

  • SAMMAN ROY
    Director
  • SAMMAN ROY
    Writer
  • Arghya Roy
    Key Cast
    "Gouranga"
  • Arpita De
    Key Cast
    "Nirmala"
  • Adrita De
    Key Cast
    "Woman in The Forest"
  • Soumya Majumdar
    Key Cast
    "Nibaron"
  • Awadhesh Kumar
    Producer
  • Project Type:
    Feature
  • Runtime:
    1 hour 21 minutes 30 seconds
  • Country of Origin:
    India
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    4:3
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Digital Cinema Package:
    Unavailable
  • NFDC Film Bazaar Recommends Award 2023
    Goa
    India
    WINNER
  • Jagran Film Festival 2024-25
    Mumbai
    India
    March 9, 2025
    Indian Premiere
    Official Selection
  • London Bengali Film Festival
    London
    United Kingdom
    April 8, 2026
    UK Premiere
    Official Selection
Distribution Information
  • Buffalo 8
    Distributor
    Country: United States
    Rights: Video on Demand
    Country: Canada
    Rights: Video on Demand
Director Biography - SAMMAN ROY

Samman Roy is an independent filmmaker based in Kolkata, India. He started his filmmaking career with TVF, after leaving a well-paying job at a multinational IT company. Later he started making his own short films under independent banners in 2017. His short films AASTHA(2018), BEFORE THE RAINS(2019), MAIL(2020) are available on platforms like Hoichoi and Addatimes. He has completed his Master of Arts in Film Studies from Jadavpur University and is currently a trainer of Media Sciences at Maulana Abul Kalam Azad University of Technology. Samman has almost 30 directorial projects in his bio, including 7 short films, over a dozen music videos, corporate films and 2 features (1 of which is in post-production).

Samman's feature film "The Exile" was selected among the TOP 10 Recommended Films of NFDC Film Bazaar 2023 - the only live action feature film in the list. At the end of the Film Bazaar, the film was awarded the Film Bazaar Recommends Award for the year.

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Director Statement

Bengali cinema has forever been characterized by the discourse on societal practices and moral values. The Bengali village has often been a backdrop of great films on topics ranging from poverty, and famine to land disputes. The landscapes have always been used to evoke qualities like lyricism and beauty. However, there also exists an atmosphere of dread and mystery in these settings, which have been mentioned in the rich heritage of horror literature in Bengal, but rarely found its way onto the screen. Through "The Exile", my primary goal was to recreate the atmosphere in those stories set in rural Bengal in the 20th century. Alongside, I also wanted to explore the dark side of rural society at that time - how it dealt with desires of the mind and body, while still being under a pretty thick blanket of orthodoxy. Apart from the struggles for land, freedom, and human rights, the rural society of those times was still submerged in the conservative malpractices, that would often ignore and alienate the desires of women, the queer community, and the marginalized. I intended to bring these repressions of society and give them a personification through the myths and folklore prevalent in those times. The genre elements of mystery and horror seemed to be the best tool to confront these orthodoxies and create a narrative around them. Finally, I wanted to create a horror film that relied less on jump scares and more on the mood created by the visuals and the inner conflicts of the characters in it.