Email
Rituparno Ghosh, the Indian film director, has died of cardiac arrest at age 49.
Ghosh, who directed about 20 feature films in the Bengali language, mostly dealing with the dilemmas of India's urban middle class. He died at his home in Kolkata, the Press Trust of India quoted his family as saying.
The director shot to fame with his first film, Hirer Angti, or The Diamond Ring in 1994. His 2007 film, The Last Lear, was in English and centered on a retired actor who is persuaded to return to cinema to reprise the lead role in a production of Shakespeare's King Lear. Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan starred in the film, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival.
Shekhar Kapur, director of the 1998 Academy Award-winning period film Elizabeth, tweeted that he was "shocked" by Ghosh's death. He described the director as a "hugely creative explorer on film".
Indian character actress Kiran Kher said Ghosh was a marvelous director and that his death was a "huge loss for Indian cinema".
