Assamese filmmaker Rima Das’s Village Rockstars on Wednesday won the Golden Gateway Award for Best Film at the Mumbai Film Festival organised by Mumbai Academy of Moving Image. Carla Simon’s Summer 1993 won the award in the international competition category of the festival, which ran from October 12-18.
Machines by Rahul Jain won the second prize in the Indian competition section, while Jonathan Olshefski got the award in the international competition section.
Village Rockstars, written, directed, produced, shot and designed by Das, narrates the story of a 10-year-old girl in Assam who yearns to own for an electric guitar. It also won the Young Critics Choice Award and Oxfam India Best Film on Gender Equality Award. Also in the competition for the top award were Sanal Kumar Sasidharan’s S Durga (which went by the working title of Sexy Durga), Dipesh Jain’s Manoj Bajpayee-starrer Gali Guliyan, Devashish Makhija’s Ajji and Pushpendra Singh’s Ashwatthama.
The Special Jury Award in the Indian category went to S Durga by Sanal Kumar Sasidharan, and to Scary Mother by Ana Urushadze in the International category.
The Golden Gateway Award (Feature) for The Half Ticket category for children’s cinema went to Nicole Van Kilsdonk’s The Day My Father Became A Bush. The Silver Gateway Award (Feature) in the same category was given to Meikeminne Clinckspoor’s Cloudboy.
Ildiko Enyedi’s On Body and Soul won the Audience Choice Award.
Sur-Gatha by Yatindra Mishra won the Excellence in Writing on Cinema Award (Hindi), while the Excellence in Writing on Cinema Award (English) was bagged by Madhuja Mukherjee for Voices of the Talking Stars.
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