Algorithms, a documentary directed by Ian McDonald about three blind chess players in India, won the Ram Bahadur Tamang Best Film trophy at the 9th Film Southasia (FSA) festival that concluded on Sunday in Kathmandu.
Chair of the FSA jury, Sadanand Menon, an art critic from Chennai said the film deserved the trophy for taking the audience into an extraordinary world of protagonists. The film is produced by Geetha J.
The QFX jury awards went to Deepa Dhanraj-directed Invoking Justice, a film which, Menon, said, showed optimism in midst of grimness surrounding women issues in India and the rest of South Asia. The film shows Muslim women in Tamil Nadu challenging the traditional male-only Islamic judicial council, or Jamaat, by forming their own.
A film from Bangladesh, Are You Listening, was another recipient of QFX jury awards. The documentary directed by Kamar Ahmed Simon follows struggles of a family after a cyclone hits coastal Bangladesh in 2009.
Although the film from Bangladesh is Simon’s debut feature, Tareque Masud Award for Best Debut film went to a film from Myanmar, No 62 Pansodan Street, directed by Cho Pyone. This short film (13 minutes long) is about a family in a colonial building in Yangon.
The newly-created Unicef Nepal award for the best film on children issues went to Char ... No Man’s Island from Bangladesh. The film directed by Sourav Sarangi follows a 14-year-old boy caught in a no man’s island in the Padma River, the border between India and Bangladesh, and in the much larger world of cross-border smuggling.
Sri Lankan movie No Fire Zone, which was banned from public viewing, received a special mention from the jury. Menon applauded the film for its investigative rigour, activism and political importance, urging the public to watch it to bring Sri Lankan President Mahindra Rajapakse to trial for the atrocities committed during the last few months of the Lankan civil war.
Chair of the FSA jury, Sadanand Menon, an art critic from Chennai said the film deserved the trophy for taking the audience into an extraordinary world of protagonists. The film is produced by Geetha J.
The QFX jury awards went to Deepa Dhanraj-directed Invoking Justice, a film which, Menon, said, showed optimism in midst of grimness surrounding women issues in India and the rest of South Asia. The film shows Muslim women in Tamil Nadu challenging the traditional male-only Islamic judicial council, or Jamaat, by forming their own.
A film from Bangladesh, Are You Listening, was another recipient of QFX jury awards. The documentary directed by Kamar Ahmed Simon follows struggles of a family after a cyclone hits coastal Bangladesh in 2009.
Although the film from Bangladesh is Simon’s debut feature, Tareque Masud Award for Best Debut film went to a film from Myanmar, No 62 Pansodan Street, directed by Cho Pyone. This short film (13 minutes long) is about a family in a colonial building in Yangon.
The newly-created Unicef Nepal award for the best film on children issues went to Char ... No Man’s Island from Bangladesh. The film directed by Sourav Sarangi follows a 14-year-old boy caught in a no man’s island in the Padma River, the border between India and Bangladesh, and in the much larger world of cross-border smuggling.
Sri Lankan movie No Fire Zone, which was banned from public viewing, received a special mention from the jury. Menon applauded the film for its investigative rigour, activism and political importance, urging the public to watch it to bring Sri Lankan President Mahindra Rajapakse to trial for the atrocities committed during the last few months of the Lankan civil war.
