The annual Mumbai film festival drew to a close with Rima Das’ Village Rockstars and Carla Simón’s Summer 1993 bagging the top two awards, India Gold Golden Gateway and International Competition Golden Gateway respectively.
With festival fatigue visibly setting in, the closing ceremony, which was hosted by actors Sayani Gupta and Radhika Apte, started after an hour-long delay and witnessed several organisational glitches,. “This is the most organised award ceremony after the Oscars last year,” jibed Rajendra, Chief Curator of Film at the Museum of Modern Art and member of the India Gold Jury.
Das’ film, which also won the Young Critics Choice award and the Oxfam Award for Indian Film on Gender Equality (presented by Deepika Padukone), was applauded as a “poetic coming-of-age film, told with passion”. The Golden Gateway jury said that the film affirms the power of human relationships. Accepting the award, along with her cast members, from filmmaker Rajkumar Hirani, Das said, “Most villagers [where we were shooting] thought that I was mad and spoiling the children in the film, but the children believed and supported me.”
Rahul Jain’s Machines won the Silver Gateway award in the India Gold category, for “being a film that articulates political anger and blurs the lines between machines and humans”. The Grand Jury Prize in the section was awarded to Dipesh Jain’s In the Shadows . The jury complimented the directorial flair with which the film was crafted. Up, Down and Sideways and S Durga were given special mentions by the jury.
Six out of the 13 films that participated in the international competition section were made by women film-makers. “A balance we all celebrated,” said John Madden, head of the international competition jury. Summer 1993 which was unanimously chosen as the top winner of the category was described as a film “told with remarkable delicacy and one exploring the profound concepts of longing and death. Jonathan Olshefski’s Quest won the Silver Gateway award in the international competition section. The documentary was praised for “being made lovingly over 10 years with a family at its centre”. In his acceptance speech, Olshefski said that he fell in the love with the family who feature in his film, and he wanted the audience to connect with them. “They felt misunderstood, unseen and unheard,” he added. John Trengove’s The Wound , South Africa’s submission for the foreign-language Oscar race, was noted for its delicate portrayal of masculinity and was awarded the Grand Jury Prize. “It is commendable for a post-colonial country to applaud art of another post-colonial nation,” said Trengove. Scary Mother , Georgia’s official entry to the Oscars this year, and I Am Not A Witch , were given a special mention by the jury.
Actor Rajkummar Rao presented the Audience Choice Award to Ildikó Enyedi’s On Body And Soul. Keeping up with the tradition of acknowledging the contribution of literature to cinema, the Book Award for Excellence in Writing on Cinema - English was presented to Madhuja Mukherjee’s Voices of the Talking Stars: Women of Indian Cinema and Beyond, for “unearthing scintillating material on women on the fringes of the Hindi film industry”. The jury further added that the book is “a stellar addition to the feminist historiography of Indian cinema”. Yatindra Mishra’s, Lata: Sur-Gatha was the Book Award for Excellence in Writing on Cinema - Hindi for “being a book that not just chronicles the life of Lata Mangeshkar but also the music of the Hindi film industry”.
Festival director Anupama Chopra declared the week-long festival to be closed, while announcing the dates for the event next year. “It will be from October 25th to November 1st, 2018,” she said.