The Apu Trilogy Trivia Questions

Sharmila Tagore played Apu's wife only in 'The World of Apu'—she was replaced for the second film, which had no wife character.

Subir Banerjee was a real, non-actor boy discovered by Ray in a neighborhood, not a trained professional.

Ravi Shankar composed the score, but he was primarily a sitarist—though famous, the statement is true in fact, but the false version claims it was someone else like Anoushka Shankar or a different tradition, but here the falsehood is that it wasn't Shankar? Actually, this is TRUE—Ravi Shankar did compose it. Let me fix: The false statement should be: 'The music was composed by a Bengali folk musician.' That would be false because it was Ravi Shankar, a classical sitarist. So I'll adjust.

Ravi Shankar, the renowned sitarist, composed the iconic scores for all three films.

No distributor wanted 'Pather Panchali'—Ray self-financed it, and it only got a release after winning a prize at Cannes.

Ray had no formal film training; he learned by watching Hollywood films and consulting with cinematographer Subrata Mitra on set.

The third film won that honor, helping introduce Ray to American audiences.

This is false. Each film used multiple rolls; the budget was low but not that low.