MUMBAI: Of late, a spate of India-made films has been doing the rounds at international film festivals and has been suitably rewarded.
One such film is director Karan Gour‘s Kshay, an intense psychological study of a woman‘s obsession with an unfinished statue of the Goddess Lakshmi. Shot in stark black-and-white, the film has travelled to four international film festivals already with many more in the offing. The film recently won the ‘Grand Jury Prize for Best Narrative Feature‘ at the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles (IFFLA).
Said producer Shaan Vyas,” Kshay has taken us four years to complete and was made with a two-man crew at most times: the director Karan Gour and the Director of Photography Abhinay Khoparzi. The film is about obsession made by an obsessive person and, more importantly, the larger issues it addresses of materialistic obsession and blind faith in religion that are very relevant in today‘s world.”
And the fact that it probably has the lowest budget of all the feature films at the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles makes this win that much more exciting. “It reinforces our belief that you don‘t need big budgets to make a good movie. Four years of Karan and Abhinay‘s relentless effort is paying off now,” said Vyas.
Other award winners were Gemma Atwal‘s Marathon Boy that got the award for best documentary while an honorable mention went to Rajan Khosa‘s Gattu.
The award for the best short went to Neeraj Ghaywan‘s Noise (Shor) and Ravi Kapoor‘s The 5, while actress Meera Simhan won an award for her performance in Sujata, each receiving an honorable mention.
Rajan Khosa took home a second honour of the evening when Gattu won the Audience Choice Award for Best Feature while the Audience Choice award for best documentary went to Gotham Chopra for his Decoding Deepak. Anirban Roy won the Audience Choice Award for best short film for Audacity (Aashprodha), according to a release.
