 Ray considered making a film on the Bangladesh Liberation War but later abandoned the idea . He said that , as a filmmaker , he was more interested in the travails of the refugees and not the politics . In 1977 , Ray completed Shatranj Ke Khiladi ( The Chess Players ) , a Hindi film based on a story by Munshi Premchand . It was set in Lucknow in the state of Oudh , a year before the Indian rebellion of 1857 . A commentary on issues related to the colonisation of India by the British , this was Ray 's first feature film in a language other than Bengali . It is his most expensive and star @-@ studded film , featuring Sanjeev Kumar , Saeed Jaffrey , Amjad Khan , Shabana Azmi , Victor Bannerjee and Richard Attenborough . 
