Director Hemanth M Rao slammed the organisers of International Indian Film Academy Awards (IIFA) for being “extremely disrespectful”. Calling his experience at the awards ceremony a “massive inconvenience”, the Kannada filmmaker said that he was upset that he waited till wee hours in the morning, only to realise he hadn’t won an award. Moreover, the director felt that the nominees weren’t given their due respect.
Held at the Etihad Arena in Abu Dhabi, the IIFA Utsavam — the awards ceremony to honour the artistes from across the four southern film industries — took place on September 27, 2024. Hemanth’s film, Sapta Sagaradaache Ello, was the biggest winner in the Kannada cinema category, taking home five awards.
Rakshit Shetty and Rukmini Vasanth were adjudged best actors while Gopalkrishna Deshpande bagged the best performer in a supporting role award. Dhananjay Ranjan was adjudged the best lyricist and MC Bijju won the best playback singer award.
Commenting that not winning an award wasn’t his issue, Hemanth posted on X that he felt the organisers failed to respect the nominees. “It’s your award. You can give it to whoever you want to. That’s your choice. I haven’t won many awards and haven’t lost sleep over it. So these grapes aren’t sour. If all the other nominees were invited and one winner emerged out of it, I wouldn’t bother getting irritated. Also, the format this year was just to hand out the award. The nominees weren’t even mentioned,” he wrote.
The IIFA Utsavam began late evening and the awards for the best Kannada artistes were given post 1:00 am. The event went on to finish by around 3:00 am. “I have been in this business for a decade and this wasn’t my first stint at the award shows. It’s always the case where the winners are flown in and hosted for the event. For context, I sat till 3:00 am in the morning, only to realise there was no award. The same happened to my music composter, Charan Raj,” wrote Hemanth.
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The filmmaker added, “Maybe it’s been a while for you and your team to realise it that your awards show run on the talent that you put on stage. It’s not the other way round.”
Meanwhile, on the work front, Hemanth is working with veteran director Shivarajkumar. Titled Bhairavana Kone Paata, the film is produced by Dr Vaishak J Gowda. The movie is touted to be an action drama set in the 14th century.
Published - September 29, 2024 09:52 pm IST
