South Asian films in rude health

Illustration/Uday Mohite

Last week brought sensational news. Four South Asian films won big nominations at the 14th Asia Pacific Screen Awards (APSA, Australia), given to the best films from 70 Asian (and Pacific) nations. These are Payal Kapadia's A Night of Knowing Nothing which won a Best Feature Film nomination. Koozhangal (Pebbles, Tamil) pulled off a double coup, earning Best Director nomination for PS Vinothraj, as well as Best Cinematographer for Vignesh Kumulai and Che Parthiban. Bangladeshi actress Azmeri Haque Badhon won a Best Actress nomination for Abdullah Mohammad Saad's Rehana (Rehana Maryam Noor). And Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh's Writing with Fire won a Best Documentary nomination. The APSA winners will be announced on November 11 at the Gold Coast, Australia.

Each of these wins is amazing, especially given the competition. But imagine just two Indian films, Payal Kapadia's A Night of Knowing Nothing and PS Vinothraj's Koozhangal, pulled off between them, four top nominations, including top honours for Best Feature Film and Best Director. The reason these wins are extraordinary, is that they are both debut features, and low budget indie films, up against the giants of contemporary world cinema. A Night of Knowing Nothing's Best Feature Film nomination is for its producers Thomas Hakim and Julien Graff of Petit Chaos, France, and Ranabir Das, who is also its cinematographer and editor. The other nominees for Best Feature Film are, ahem ahem, Asghar Farhadi's A Hero (Iran; Grand Prix at Cannes; Farhadi has also won two Oscars for A Separation and The Salesman), Ryusuke Hamaguchi's Drive My Car (Japan; Best Screenplay at Cannes), Mohammad Rasoulof's There is No Evil (Iran; Golden Bear winner, Berlin Film Festival), and Natalya Nazarova's The Pencil (Russia). Moreover, it is very rare that a docu-fiction feature wins big in the Best Feature Film category, when there is already a separate category for Best Documentary. Kapadia is an FTII graduate (they always say ‘pass-out,' as if FTII is an anaesthetic), and her film uses letters between estranged lovers, and includes "found footage" shot by friends, to comment on the growing nationalism in the country, and student agitations nationwide addressing this.

Likewise, for Vinothraj: with his first feature Koozhangal, he's earned a Best Director nomination. The other nominees for Best Director are Asghar Farhadi for A Hero, Ryusuke Hamaguchi's Drive My Car, Kamila Andini for Yuni (Indonesia), and Dea Kulumbegashvili for Beginning (Georgia). Koozhangal had earlier won the Tiger Award at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, and with Vignesh Kumulai and Che Parthiban also winning Best Cinematographer nominations, this is huge. Vinothraj, who earlier worked in a DVD shop, lost his father at a young age and his mother is a street vendor. He is a self-taught filmmaker, and all his key crew are first-timers like himself, including the two cinematographers and editor Ganesh Siva. None of this is visible when you see his stunning film, that is as hard-hitting, as it is mesmerising. It explores the relationship between a violent, alcoholic father and his young son, during a long walk home in sun-seared, drought-ridden Madurai, during which the boy keeps a pebble in his mouth, so that he automatically salivates, in order to cope with long periods of thirst, without water. When I spoke to Vinothraj after his Tiger Award win at Rotterdam, he said that when he shared the news with young Chellapandi, the brilliant child protagonist, a non-actor living in a Madurai village, he had no idea what the award meant, and asked if it had something to do with Tiger biscuits.

Badhon, who won a Best Actress nomination for Abdullah Mohammad Saad's powerful Rehana (Rehana Maryam Noor), had already won a standing ovation at Cannes, where it was the first Bangladeshi film in Cannes' Un Certain Regard. She is compelling as its protagonist, a medical professor who pays a heavy price for taking action in a #MeToo incident of sexual assault. Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh's Writing with Fire, also a debut feature documentary, that won a Best Documentary nomination, had earlier won the Special Jury Award: Impact for Change and Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival. It is a powerful film on the feisty team behind Khabar Lahariya, India's only newspaper run by Dalit women. Disclaimer: I'm a member of the Asia Pacific Screen Academy and closely associated with APSA since 2013, currently as Competition Advisor. Such exciting films by the younger generation. Going by their achievements, even in the COVID era, South Asian cinema is in rude health, if you ask me.

Meenakshi Shedde is India and South Asia Delegate to the Berlin International Film Festival, National Award-winning critic, curator to festivals worldwide and journalist.
Reach her at meenakshi.shedde@mid-day.com