When the prizes for the India Gold section were announced this year at the award ceremony of Jio MAMI 18th Mumbai Film Festival, filmmakers from the northeastern part of India had every reason to celebrate. The two films from the region that were in the competition category, emerged victorious after contesting with nine other films. MAMI has always considered creative excellence in the form of storytelling as their forté in their competitive awards category. And this year when the jury, headed by the eminent Turkish filmmaker Reha Erdem, finally announced the awards, it came as no surprise.
Let’s take a look at the top winners:
Loktak Lairembee (The Lady of the Lake)
The top prize in the Golden Gateway Award category went to Haobam Paban Kumar's first Manipuri feature film Loktak Lairembee (The Lady of the Lake), which is loosely based on the short story Nongmei by Sudhir Naoroibam. The distinctive feature of the narrative of the film is that it borrows the elements and style of a documentary. The 81-minutes long film narrates the story of Tomba, who is sick and depressed since the authorities burnt his huts after blaming his community for the pollution of the Loktak Lake. One day he accidentally finds a gun within the biomass and thereafter the life of the protagonist takes a new turn.
Ottayaal Paatha (The Narrow Path)
The Silver Gateway Award went to Satish Babusenan and Santosh Babusenan's second Malayalam film Ottayaal Paatha (The Narrow Path) that deals with the internal exploration between a father and son who live in the slum. The Babusenan brothers had started their career as cinematographers and had shot and produced several music videos, corporate videos and short films in Mumbai. In 2015, they made their first feature Chaayam Poosiya Veedu (The Painted House), which got embroiled in a censorship battle. Both the films have been jointly written, shot and directed by the duo.
Haanduk (The Hidden Corner)
The Jury Grand Prize was given to Jaicheng Jai Dohutia’s debut Assamese film Haanduk (The Hidden Corner) that is made with a budget of less than Rs 10 lakh. The jury members gave citation to Haanduk as a persuasive poetic film reflecting on how family connections can endure even when shaken by political turmoil and grief. Based on true events the story revolves around Mukti, who had left home to join an extremist outfit. When his bullet-ridden body is handed over to Hermoni, the narrative of the film unfolds into a chain of events that engulfs the life of the trio, Hermoni, Sewali and Biplob.
Autohead,The Cinema Travellers
An actor and a director duo shared the Special Mention award this year. Deepak Sampath won an award for his realistic performance as the off-kilter, misogynist and psychotic protagonist in the mockumentry Autohead. Whereas Shirley Abraham and Amit Madhesiya's The Cinema Travellers won for taking viewers on a journey to explore alternative ways of watching movies in rural India. The film had also won the Young Critics Choice Award.
Lipstick Under my Burkha, A Death in the Gunj
This year there were also two special awards. One of them was Oxfam Award for Best Film on Gender Equality, which went to Alankrita Shrivastava's story of four different women and their struggles to unleash the norms of a societal captivity in Lipstick Under my Burkha. The award is instituted to honour the sensitive depiction of women in cinema.
Konkona Sen Sharma’s story of a sensitive university student unraveling while on a week-long vacation with a crowd of cocksure relatives and family friends in A Death in the Gunj won the MasterCard Best India Female Filmmaker Award.
(Dipankar Sarkar is a graduate in film editing from the Film & Television Institute of India, and is currently working as a Data Manager in the film industry.)
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