The 13th edition of the Bengaluru International Film Festival (BiFFes) drew to a close on Thursday with 27 films winning awards in three categories – Asian, Kannada and Indian. The awards were presented for films released for two years, 2020 and 2021, as the festival was not held last year due to the pandemic. Governor Thaawarchand Gehlot presided over the event and presented the awards.
Raghu K.M.’s Doddahatti Boregowda and Prithvi Konanur’s Pinki Elli? won the top honours in the Kannada cinema section for 2021 and 2020 respectively. While Yuvarathna, starring the late Puneeth Rajkumar won the best Kannada popular entertainment award for 2021, the hit ‘Dia’ received the honor for the previous year.
Vishnu Mohan’s Malayalam directorial Meppadiyan won the best Indian film for 2021, while Aimee Bauruah’s Assamese film, Semkhor, was the winner for 2020. In the best Asian film category the winners for 2020 and 2021 were the Sri Lankan film The Newspaper and Aditya Kripalani’s Not Today. With three films being awarded in each category and many special jury awards, the awards list was probably the longest — 27 — for any edition of BIFFes.
Acknowledging that the festival was organised in 35 days, N. Manjunath Prasad, Principal Secretary, Information and Public Relations Department, said it was a “miracle”. “We held 332 screenings of over 200 films from 55 countries, and not one screening was cancelled or disrupted,” he said.
One of the criticisms among a section of film-goers was the unusually large number of Kannada film screenings. At the ceremony, Mr. Prasad said that since this year’s edition of the festival covered films from two years, the number of Kannada films had increased to 52.
Sunil Purnaik, Chairman, Karnataka Chalanachitra Academy, hailed the festival’s digital debut as a success. “We screened a total of 38 films online. Though nearly 1,600 people had registered to view films online, over 900 logged in to watch them. This is one of the highest turn out online for any festival in the country,” he claimed.
