Martin Scorsese is one of the top most filmmakers of all time. Over his career spanning around five decades, he has given countless classics. Like almost every great contemporary filmmaker, Martin also took inspiration from the Indian maestro, Satyajit Ray. Martin thinks very high of Satyajit Ray and believes that his films introduced the western world to the real India. His 'Apu Trilogy' is considered groundbreaking in the cinema world.

Scorcese said, "“In the relatively short history of cinema, Satyajit Ray is one of the names that we all need to know, whose films we all need to see. And to revisit, as I do pretty frequently.”

He further stated, "For those of us here in the West, the Apu trilogy — Pather Panchali (1955), Aparajito (1956) and Apur Sansar (1959) — was a milestone," Scorsese said. "We were used to seeing India on screen but through a purely colonial perspective, which obviously meant that the principal characters were Westerners and the “extras”, the people who provided the local colour and the background detail, were Indians. We had no idea whether the stories were happening in Gujarat, Kashmir, West Bengal or Maharashtra — it was just India."