Gajendra Ahire’s ‘Touring Talkies’ wins Best Feature Film award.
By Prabhav Hiremath
MUMBAI: Renowned Marathi director Ravi Jadhav and Bollywood director Nagesh Kukunoor were felicitated on the concluding day of the Navi Mumbai International Film Festival (NMIFF) at Dr. D. Y. Patil Auditorium, here.
Jadhav has to his credit popular films like ‘Natarang’, ‘Balgandharva’, ‘Balak Palak’ and the recent ‘Timepass’. Kukunoor has some hits under his belt, like ‘Hyderabad Blues’, ‘Rockford’, ‘Iqbal’, ‘Dor’ and the about to be released ‘Lakshmi’ on the celluloid.
“Everything starts small and eventually grows and am sure NMIFF will only grow with every passing year,” said Kukunoor.
American feature film ‘Surkhaab’, directed by Sanjay Talreja, was the closing film of the festival. The film is set in the backdrop of Chandigarh, India and Toronto, Canada.
A highlight on the last day was the trailer of the upcoming movie ‘W’, launched by its cast and crew. The tag line of the movie is ‘Women of today v/s Men of yesterday’ and it is slated to release on March 14th in India.
Also present were the cast and crew of the movie ‘Filmistaan’. Directed by Nitin Kakkar, the film is scheduled to hit theatres on March 21st and stars Sharib Hashmi and Gopal Tiway.
The festival received over 300 entries from around the globe; a total of 40 films were screened in a span of three days.
Sachin Khanna, Founder and Chairman, NMIFF, said: “These three days of NMIFF has been a dream come true. We promise to come back next year with more films on a much bigger platform.”
The second day of the festival saw some Indian films screened, including ‘June’ (social awareness film – by Viplab Majumder), ‘Sundara’ (feature film – by Deepak Kadam), ‘Musallam Imaan’ (documentary – by Aroop Deb and Amitabha A Gupta), ‘Prism’ (short film – by Sandip Pandurang Mane), ‘Maliwood Talkies’ (documentary – by Sudhir Kasabe), ‘Tara’ (feature – by Kumar Raj), ‘Gurudakshina’ (short film – by Vishal Naik), ‘Vartul’ (short film – by Santosh Ram) and ‘By-Lane 2’ (documentary – by Utpal Datta).
The audience also got an opportunity to interact with Oscar winning producer Marc Baschet of ‘No Man’s Land (2001)’ fame, during a master class with him on ‘Marketing and Distributing Independent Films Globally’.
He also spoke on marketing and distribution of the acclaimed film ‘The Lunchbox’, which was co-produced by him and directed by Ritesh Batra. The session was moderated by Ashok Purang, Festival Director and Salim Arif, Director of Cultural Affairs, NMIFF.
The winners of the festival are:
Students short category:
Best Short film – Lost House (Russia) – directed by Nikolay Kotyash
Best Documentary – Piros Feher Zold (Red White Green) (Hungary) – directed by Tarek Raffoul
Professional shorts category:
Best Short film – The Only Man (Spain) – directed by Jos Man
Best Social Awareness film – Post Mortem (India) – Balasaheb Gore & Arun Newaskar
Best Documentary – Maliwood Talks (India) – directed by Sudhir Kasabe
Best Feature Film: Touring Talkies (India) – directed by Gajendra Ahire
Jury’s Special Mention Award:
Best Professional shorts – Vartul (India) – directed by Santosh Ram
Best Feature film – Sat naa gat (India) – directed by Raju Parsekar
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