Amit Dutta’s Rhythm Of A Flower (Phool Ka Chand) was presented with the Golden Gateway Award, the top honour in the South Asia Competition, at this year’s MAMI Mumbai Film Festival (October 19-24).
The hand-drawn animation is a biopic of Indian classical music singer Kumar Gandharva. Written and directed by Dutta, the film was hand animated with watercolours by visual artist Allen Shaw.
Nocturnes, a documentary by Anirban Dutta and Anupama Srinivasan, won the festival’s Silver Gateway Award. On the surface a nature doc about two researchers looking for hawk moths in the Himalayas, the film is also a meditation on the process of filmmaking. It has also won awards at Sundance and Thessaloniki Documentary film festivals.
The festival’s Special Jury Prize went to Raam Reddy’s The Fable, starring Manoj Bajpayee, about the impact of an arson attack on a family living in the Himalayas. The film premiered at this year’s Berlin film festival and has also screened at Nantes Three Continents and Valladolid film festivals.
Shuchi Talati’s Girls Will Be Girls continued an awards sweep that started in Sundance by winning four prizes in Mumbai – the Special Mention in the South Asia Competition, the Rashid Irani Young Critics Choice Award, the NETPAC Award and the Film Critics Guild Gender Sensitivity Award.
NETPAC Special Mentions went to Shambhala, by Nepal’s Min Bahadur Bham, and Agent Of Happiness, from Arun Bhattarai and Dorottya Zurbós.
Mumbai film festival, which is organised by the Mumbai Academy of Moving Image (MAMI), expanded its competition section from India to other South Asian nations for the first time at last year’s edition, which was the first in a physical format following the pandemic.
This year, the festival took place in a shorter, stripped down format after losing its title sponsor, Mukesh Ambani’s Jio, but plans to ramp up again for next year’s edition. MAMI board member and renowned filmmaker and archivist Shivendra Singh Dungarpur has stepped in to steer the festival through its transition.
Cannes Grand Prix winner All We Imagine As Light, directed by Payal Kapadia, opened the festival, while Sean Baker’s Cannes Palme d’Or winner Anora played as the closing film.