Normally nothing moves the Mumbai film industry more than box office numbers but it is an undeniable fact that there is a huge hole in their hearts where Irrfan Khan once sat comfortably. It's no surprise then that every time his death anniversary is upon us, there is an outpouring of emotion. The emotion is not staged or curated. It just is.

This year too, there was much of it around his sixth death anniversary. April 29. The director of his unreleased film The Last Tenant, Sarthak Dasgupta, restored the footage from a 43-minute film made in 2000 and released it on YouTube. It starred Vidya Balan in her only collaboration with the actor, and reminded us of his brilliance. He is a violinist and she is a music loving ghost, and their scenes together are magic.

Then Irrfan's wife Sutapa Sikdar released footage of Alvida, a love story around leprosy he had shot for BBC starring their junior from the National School of Drama, a then unknown actor, Nawazuddin Siddiqui. Their most famous collaboration, Ritesh Batra's 2013 film The Lunchbox is having a moment too, with a musical based on the film being staged at Berkeley Repertory.till June 29. It stars Manu Narayan as Saajan, the character played by Irrfan.

But it is Ranjeeta Kaur's documentary Paan Singh Tomar: A Story That Refused to Die which best captures the actor's resilience and commitment. Tomar was a soldier turned athlete turned dacoit whose story says Irrfan in the documentary was in our consciousness but not on our screens. When his friend Tigmanshu Dhulia, who directed him in Haasil, decided to make the 2012 film, Irrfan was the obvious choice.

Kaur was directing the behind the scenes making of the film but lost 30 hours of footage. It took her 14 years to finally bring it to light and Irrfan's absence makes it particularly poignant as he shoots in difficult conditions, sometimes with a cast on his foot, and at other times with a coach who helped him with the steeplechase scenes. As he says in the film, much like in life, Irrfan finished the race, didn't surrender. He shot the film for 75 days, and excelled in all three phases of Tomar's life--in the army, as an athlete, and as a baghi. The documentary is as much a celebration of Tomar's spirit as it is of Irrfan the man and the actor. If the film leaves you in tears, it is because it reinforces what cinema has lost.

Now if we could only see the unreleased satire by the dismantled AIB for Prime Video, Gormint, which was planned for a 2020 premiere but shelved after the furore over the streaming network's Tandav, we would be somewhat less sad.