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Chatrak is not an easy watch. It is slow, unsettling, and unapologetically weird. But for those willing to enter its fungal dreamscape, it offers a powerful, poetic punch. It reminds us that no matter how high we build our glass towers, the earth below—and the strange life it spawns—will always have the final word.
The film follows two half-brothers returning to Kolkata for very different reasons. The first, a successful architect named Sonny (played by Paoli Dam), has returned from Paris to oversee a massive real estate project. The second, an alcoholic vagabond named Tunny (played by Samrat Chakrabarti), has returned to the city to die.
Chatrak (2011): When a Mushroom Forest Grew in the City of Joy Bengali Movie Chatrak
Jayasundara uses these fungal forests to critique the real estate boom that swept through India in the late 2000s. The mushrooms represent everything that modern development tries to erase: squalor, wild growth, decay, and the primal, unsanitary side of life. In one haunting sequence, Tunny’s mushroom colony becomes a bizarre, neo-tribal commune for the city’s forgotten poor—a utopia growing in the heart of a dystopia.
Upon release, Chatrak polarized audiences. Mainstream Bengali viewers expecting a traditional narrative found it “bizarre” and “pretentious.” Critics, however, praised its audacity. It traveled to several international film festivals, including the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) and the London Film Festival. Chatrak is not an easy watch
Visually, Chatrak is a masterpiece of discomfort. Cinematographer Chintan Rajkumar shoots Kolkata in washed-out grays and sickly yellows, contrasting it with the eerie, phosphorescent glow of the mushroom caves. The pacing is deliberately slow, almost meditative, forcing the viewer to sit with the stench and sweat of the city.
The title Chatrak is the film’s true protagonist. The mushrooms are not just props; they are living, breathing symbols of nature’s rebellion. As the city’s builders cover every inch of earth with concrete, the mushrooms rise from the cracks—spontaneous, organic, and uncontrollable. It reminds us that no matter how high
While Sonny gets entangled in the ruthless politics of land acquisition and construction, Tunny disappears into the city's forgotten margins—the under-construction buildings and slums. It is here that the film’s central metaphor erupts. In an abandoned, humid construction site, Tunny discovers a mysterious, rapidly growing forest of giant, flesh-colored mushrooms. These fungi become his shelter, his family, and his escape from the capitalist nightmare above.
Today, Chatrak is considered a cult classic in the realm of Indian parallel cinema. It stands as a rare artifact: a Bengali film that dared to ask whether nature can fight back against a concrete jungle—not with a roar, but with a silent, spore-driven takeover.
Paoli Dam delivers a restrained, haunting performance as Sonny, a woman caught between corporate greed and suppressed humanity. However, it is Samrat Chakrabarti’s Tunny who anchors the film’s emotional void—a man who finds peace only when he returns to dirt and fungus.
In the landscape of Bengali cinema, few films have been as boldly unconventional as Chatrak . Directed by the acclaimed avant-garde filmmaker Vimukthi Jayasundara (who won the Caméra d’Or at Cannes for The Forsaken Land ), this 2011 Indo-French co-production is not a typical Tollywood song-and-drama fare. Instead, it is a surreal, slow-burn political allegory wrapped in the gritty realism of Kolkata’s urban decay.