NEW DELHI: Labour of Love written and directed by Aditya Vikram Sengupta won awards for best film, best screenplay and best director award at the New York Indian Film Festival (NYIFF).
On the other hand, actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui got the Best Actor award for Haraamkhor, whereas Kalki Koechlin won the Best Actress award for her performance in
In Haraamkhor, which is directed by Shlok Sharma, Siddiqui plays a married teacher in love with his student, essayed by Shweta Tripathi. In Margarita, With a Straw,directed by Shonali Bose, Koechlin is seen as Laila, an outgoing wheelchair bound teenager with cerebral palsy who is absolutely determined to have a normal life despite her challenges.
The week-long 15th annual festival ended earlier this month with the New York premiere of Dum Laga Ke Haisha, a Yash Raj production starring Ayushmann Khurrana and debutante Bhumi Pednekar, directed by Sharat Katariya.
Set in the crumbling environs of Calcutta, the film Labour of Love tells the story of two ordinary lives suspended in the duress of a spiraling recession. They are married to a cycle of work and domesticroutine and long stretch of waiting in the silence of an empty house; they share each other’s solitude in pursuit of a distant dream that visits them briefly every morning.
Vignesh and Ramesh received the Best Child Actor award for the Tamil film Kaakaa Muttai. Directed by Manikandan M, the film tells the story about how two slum boys are consumed by the desire to taste a pizza after the opening of a pizza parlour on their old playground. Realizing that one pizza costs more than their family’s monthly income, they begin to plot ways to earn more money – inadvertently beginning an adventure that will involve the entire city.
Seek and Hide, a short film directed by Manoj K. Nitharwal starring Mohan Agashe, Seema Biswas, Shalva Kinja Wadekar, Suleman, Khushboo Upadhyay, and Shabnam Sukhdev, won the Best Short film award.
Daughters of Mother India directed by Vibha Bakshi won the Best Documentary award. The documentary is a filmmaker’s journey through the aftermath of the horrific rape and murder of a 23 year old medical intern in Delhi on 16 December, 2012. For weeks mass protests filled the streets of India and the country witnessed ‘gender consciousness’ and extraordinary solidarity by the ordinary citizens – like never before.
Filmmakers like Vishal Bharadwaj, Hansal Mehta, Shonali Bose, Dev Benegal and actors including Koechlin, Agashe, Samrat Chakraborty and others walked the red carpet.
