writing: "Distant Thunder has the deliberate, unadorned reality of a folk tale, a fable of encroaching, enlarging catastrophe." He calls the film "superb and achingly simple ... Numbers as huge as ["5 million"] can be dangerous. A tragedy of such magnitude becomes an event abstracted by arithmetic. But Ray's artistry alters the scale. His concentrating on just a few victims of the famine causes such massive loss to become real, immediate. Ray makes numbers count." Legacy In 2012, filmmaker Amit Dutta included the film in his personal top ten (for "The Sight & Sound Top 50 Greatest Films of All Time" poll). Awards Berlin International Film Festival 1973: Golden Bear for Best Film 21st National Film Awards National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Bengali - Ashani Sanket National Film Award for Best Music Direction - Satyajit Ray National Film Award for Best Cinematography - Soumendu Roy References External links as Asani Sanket at SatyajitRay.org Films directed by Satyajit Ray 1973 films 1973 drama films Bengali-language Indian films Films set in 1943 Films set in Bengal Golden Bear winners Indian World War II films Social realism in film Films whose cinematographer won the Best Cinematography National Film Award Films about famine Films with screenplays by Satyajit Ray Best Bengali Feature Film National Film Award winners 1970s Bengali-language films Films based on works by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay Indian drama films