Malajahna (Dead Moon) is a 1965 Oriya film written and directed by Nitai Palit based on a novel of the same title by the Oriya novelist Upendra Kishore Das. The film stars Akshaya Mohanty (Kashyap) and Jharana Das in the lead. Considered as a classic in the history of Oriya cinema, the film deals with an unusual theme in seventies in rural India of love between a married woman and a young man.This love story is narrated in the context of life in rural Orissa infested by superstitions, narrow caste prejudices and acute poverty. Women were like slaves with no mind and choice of their own and child marriages were widely prevalent. The agony and suffering of Sati may be seen as essentially related to the social evils that afflicted contemporary rural Orissa.