NEW DELHI: The Lunchbox has won the highest number of awards with three awards – Best Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) and Outstanding Achievement for star Irrfan Khan – at the 56 Asia-Pacific Film Festival held in Macau.
Kore-Eda’s Like Father, Like Son won the two top awards of Best Picture and Best Director.
Hong Kong producer Nansun ShiI served as the head of the jury. She was joined by China’s Zhang Zhao, Malaysia’s Afdlin ShaukiI, Taiwan’s Sylvia Chang and South Korea’s Hur Jin-ho.
Meanwhile, The Lunchbox has also won two awards at the 10th Dubai International Film Festival held in the Madinat Arena of the Madinat Jumeirah resort: Irrfan Khan received Best Actor for his role portraying the role of a lonely man nearing retirement. Director Ritesh Batra shared the Special Mention for his screenplay with Souleymane Démé for his role in Grigris, a France-Chad co-production.
The best director went to India’s Sandeep Ray for Thin Arms in the Muhr AsiaAfrica Shorts competition.
The president of the AsiaAfrica Feature jury was Indian film-maker Shekhar Kapur. Its members include Lebanese actress Carole Abboud and cinematographer Tareq El-Telmissany. Kapur thanked his five-member jury, saying “We started with complete disagreement but within two or three hours ended in complete agreement. So we did our job well.”
