Ritesh Batra’s Quiet Collaboration With Robert Redford Lives On

India-West News Desk

LOS ANGELES, CA – Robert Redford has passed away at 89, and tributes are pouring in, recalling his five-decade sweep across American cinema—from Sundance Kid to Sundance founder. But one of his most poignant late-career moments came far from the spectacle of Hollywood blockbusters, in a quiet love story shaped by an Indian filmmaker, Ritesh Batra.

In 2017, Redford reunited with longtime screen partner Jane Fonda in Our Souls at Night, a film Batra directed with the kind of sensitivity that defined his international breakthrough, The Lunchbox.

Adapted from Kent Haruf’s novel, the drama follows two widowed neighbors in small-town Colorado—Louis Waters (Redford) and Addie Moore (Fonda)—who seek solace in each other’s company. The project gave audiences one last glimpse of Redford and Fonda together, five decades after their spark in Neil Simon’s Barefoot in the Park.

For Batra, the journey to Redford was anything but inevitable. In 2013, he had been a young filmmaker in Park City, Utah, attending the Sundance Institute’s Screenwriters and Directors Lab. Meeting Redford, the festival’s founder, felt like a once-in-a-lifetime brush with stardom. Years later, when Redford’s office called to discuss an adaptation of Our Souls at Night, Batra was stunned. Within ten minutes of their first real conversation, Redford asked him when he could start, he told Moveable Feast in an interview.

The film premiered at the Venice Film Festival, where Redford and Fonda received Golden Lions for Lifetime Achievement. Released on Netflix, it found an audience that cherished its quiet, tender portrait of late-life companionship.

For Redford, the film underscored his willingness to experiment well into his eighties. For Batra, it was proof that an Indian filmmaker could bring global resonance to a Hollywood love story without losing its intimacy.