Kamar Ahmad Simon’s documentary Are You listening!’ won the Golden Conch Award for the Best Documentary Film (above 60 minutes) at the Mumbai International Film Festival for Documentary, Short and Animation Films (MIFF) 2014 which concluded here on Sunday.
The 90-minute documentary Are You listening!, set in the coastal belt of Bangladesh, deals with the alarming effects of climate change. A powerful and beautifully photographed film, the documentary deftly captures the fighting spirit of the families of Sutarkhali – a coastal village that lay under water after a tidal surge that followed cyclone — and their will to survive.
Simon throws light on the global issue of climate change –through the prism of Rakhi, her husband Soumen and their six-year-old son are forced to live on a dyke with 100 other families. The Government is slow to help the families reclaim their land, and continuing delays cause mounting friction.
The prestigious award for Are you listening! comprised a Golden Conch trophy and `500,000 cash prize (`300,000 for the Director and `200,000 for the producer – Sara Afreen).
FTII production Black Rock directed by Vikrant Janardhan Pawar was adjudged the Best Short Fiction film in International Competition.
The Golden Conch Best Animation Film award went to True love Story by Gitanjali Rao, Nishtha Jain, whose documentary Gulabi Gang, won the Best Director Award in the International Competition section of MIFF.
Dhvani Desai’s RTI film Chakravyuh voted most popular film of MIFF 2014. For the first time, MIFF had introduced a new category of award – ‘Most Popular Film of the Festival’, which was to be chosen through voting by festival delegates.
Mumbai-based filmmaker Dylan Mohan Gray’s film Fire in the Blood got the Dadasaheb Phalke Chitranagari Award for Best Debut Film of a Director, while IDPA Award for the best student film went to Sonyacha Amba (Golden Mango) directed by Govind Raju and produced by FTII, Pune. The Kashmiri short-film Tamaash (The Puppet) won the Golden Conch award for the Best Short Fiction Film (up to 45 minutes) in the National Competition.
Also in the National Competition section, Seven Hundred Zero Zero Seven by Altaf Mazid got the Golden Conch for Best Documentary (upto 40 minutes), while Have You Seen the Arana by Sunanda Bhat and Invoking Justice by Deepa Dhanraj shared the Best Documentary Awards in above 40 minutes category.