The 61st Sydney Film Festival that started on June 4, 2014 till June 15, 2014 is screening two Indian Films and both the films are based on one common theme viz. ‘Lonely Housewives’ in two different eras who because of their boring schedule and uninteresting lives are forced to find interests elsewhere.

Even as Ritesh Batra’s highly-lauded The Lunchbox is among the four Indian films being screened at Festival, the other film is Charulata, made by cine craftsman Satyajit Ray and being screened almost 50 years after it was last exhibited at the same festival.

Charulata is one of Ray’s women-centric films that was well ahead of its times when made in 1964 with Madhabi Mukherjee in the lead. The film is based on a story by Rabindranath Tagore and set in the late nineteenth century and tells the tale of the lonely housewife whose busy husband has no time for her.

Coincidentally, The Lunchbox is also the story of a loney housewife and how she begins to correspond with someone through letters sent inside a lunchbox.

The other Indian films that are being screened at Sydney Film Festival are Pan Nalin’s Faith Connections which is set during the Hindu religious ritual Kumbh Mela and Richie Mehta’s Siddharth which is about a Father’s determination in seeking his son, who was sent away from home for a job only to find out that he’s kidnapped and gone missing.