To love is to worship the fallible god/ To love is to kneel before chaos and call it sacred.

- Sweekriti 

Nagarkirtan is a powerful Bengali film directed by Kaushik Ganguly that tells a heart-touching love story between two people who live on the margins of society. At its core, it’s a story about identity, dignity, and the quiet struggle to be accepted. 

Kaushik Ganguly, the director, handles a deeply sensitive subject with rare grace and honesty. He doesn’t try to dramatize pain; he simply presents it with truth, and that’s what makes Nagarkirtan so powerful. Riddhi Sen’s performance as Puti is heart-wrenching. He disappears into the role so completely that we forget we’re watching an actor. His eyes speak what words cannot. Ritwick Chakraborty brings a quiet strength to Madhu, making their bond feel both fragile and fierce. Together, they create magic on screen the one that doesn’t scream for attention, but demands respect.

The story opens with Puti eloping from her home, where her father opposed her feminine identity—with Madhu, a delivery boy by day and kirtan flautist by night. Flashbacks reveal Puti’s struggles: a failed relationship with her tutor Subhash da, who plans to marry her sister, and her subsequent refuge with a Kolkata eunuch community led by Guru ma Arati. As Puti and Madhu’s secret romance blossoms, she dreams of affording sex-reassignment surgery and Madhu offers to sell ancestral land to help .

Their hope shatters when Puti attends a kirtan with Madhu’s family, loses her wig in an emotional breakdown, and is publicly exposed as a trans woman. Disowned by Madhu’s relatives, she wanders destitute until locals guarding their own community’s reputation who mob and strip her. Madhu discovers her fate too late: Puti has hanged herself in police custody. Grief-stricken, he returns to Kolkata and joins the eunuch community in solidarity .

By centering on Puti’s life and tragic end, Nagarkirtan offers a raw, unflinching portrayal of the marginalization, violence, and longing experienced by transgender and intersex communities in India. Its nonlinear narrative, intimate performances, and social commentary mark it as a landmark in queer Indian cinema.

Nagarkirtan doesn’t just tell a story but rather it dares to show the truths we often choose to ignore. Through Puti and Madhu’s journey, it quietly exposes the cruelty and discomfort that society throws at those who don’t fit into its rigid boxes. The film never begs for sympathy , it simply lays bare the loneliness, the small joys, and the aching hunger to be seen and loved. Every frame carries emotion , not just in dialogues, but in silences, glances, and the music of a flute echoing in the background. The story doesn’t ask questions, it becomes one.

You don’t walk away from the film;

you carry it with you.

Overall rating 4.8/5 ⭐

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