Satyajit Ray's Pather Panchali placed at 15 in BBC's 100 best foreign language films list

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Satyajit Ray's epic masterpiece "Pather Panchali" has been included by BBC's 100 best foreign language films but it is the only film from India to feature in the list.

Ray's film, released in 1955 and the first in his "Apu" trilogy, was placed at number 15 in the list, which has been topped by Akira Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai".

The list was culled out from a poll where over 200 critics from 43 countries picked their best foreign language film.

It all narrowed down to 100 films from 67 different directors, from 24 countries, and in 19 languages.

"27 of the highest-rated films were in French, followed by 12 in Mandarin, and 11 each in Italian and Japanese," according to the BBC.

Some of the notable films that featured in the list are -- Kurosawa's "Rashomon ", Wong Kar-wai's "In the Mood for Love", Andrei Tarkovsky's "The Mirror", Asghar Farhadi's "A Separation", Guillermo del Toro's "Pan's Labyrinth", Ingmar Bergman's "The Seventh Seal" and Alfonso Cuaron's "Y Tu Mama Tambien", among others.

The BBC admitted that only four of the 100 films have been directed by women. However, it said that 45 per cent of the critics who took part in the poll were women.