Sendhil Ramamurthy, Monali Thakur bestowed best thespian awards.
By Bala Chandran
GAITHERSBURG, MD: Chittagong, a historical film directed by Bedabrata Pain, set in the backdrop of a 1930 armed uprising against the British Raj in the eponymous city, won the Best Feature Film award at the third Washington, DC South Asian Film Festival, which concluded on Sunday.
The film, starring Manoj Bajpai, had won a National Film Award in the “Best Debut Film of a Director” category in 2013.
“It would not have happened without [Bajpai],” Pain said, while receiving the award, along with the celebrated actor, from Indian American entrepreneur Frank Islam.
Pain, a scientist-turned-filmmaker also won the best director award for Chittagong.
The best actor award went to Indian American actor Sendhil Ramamurthy, whose film Brahmin Bulls was one of the more popular films at the festival. To the US television audience, the 40-year-old actor is known for his role as Mohinder Suresh in the NBC drama Heroes.
Monali Thakur was chosen the best actress for her role in Nagesh Kukunoor’s Lakshmi.
Pakistani filmmaker Iram Parveen Bilal’s thriller Josh was selected the best story by the jury. Receiving the award, a teary-eyed Bilal said she was honored to be in the company of accomplished directors such as veteran filmmaker Prakash Jha, who was present in the audience and whose films were screened as part of a retrospective.
“Seventeen years ago, I saw Mrityudand—at a very emotional time in my life, and I never thought I will be standing across from Prakash Jha and be a filmmaker,” she said.
Josh also won the Best Film People’s Choice award.
The Best Short Film in the People’s Choice category was The Ring, by US-based director Vandana Narang.
The award ceremony was preceded by a discussion on films by the various filmmakers who screened their movies in the festival.
Islam, the chief guest of the evening, and who presented the awards, praised Manoj and Geeta Singh of Ceasar Productions for bringing the festival to Washington and “enabling all of us here … to see and to think and to feel India and South Asia beyond Bollywood.”
He reserved special praise for Praksh Jha, whom he described as a filmmaker who has captured the zeitgeist of today’s India.
“Just as the works of Shakespeare held a mirror to Elizabethan England and that of Gustave Flaubert to 19th Century France, the cinematic works of Prakash Jha reflect the contemporary Indian reality,” he said.
The three-day festival screened some two-dozen features, short films and documentaries in various South Asian languages and in English, as well as Q&A sessions with filmmakers and actors, and workshops.