Ashish Pandey's Nooreh wins Sonje Award at Busan International Film Festival

The Busan International Film Festival concluded on Friday, 13 October, after screening 324 films from 79 countries. The festival's awards were announced on Saturday, 14 October. The Chinese film Savage and Korean film Clean Up shared the big prize, the New Currents Award.

Nine Indian films were screened at the festival — from Devashish Makhija's Bhonsle to Nandita Das's Manto in The Window on Asian Cinema section.

Ashish Pandey's Nooreh, along with the Korean short film Cat Day Afternoon, directed by Kwon Sungmo, shared the Sonje Award at the festival. A jury comprising of Indonesian director Kamila Andini, Korean director Park Chan Ok and Serbian film critic Miroljub Vuckovica announced the award to the films in the Wide Angle Competition section.

Both filmmakers were also awarded 10,000,000 KRW (around Rs6.5 lakh) for their next production.

Pandey's 22-minute short film, which had its world premiere at Busan, follows eight-year-old girl Nooreh (Saima Latief) who resides on the India-Pakistan border. She finds out that when she is awake, there are no gunfights. When her school closes down due to heavy crossfire, Nooreh makes the decision not to fall asleep at night.

The Busan International Film Festival wrote that Pandey's "story beautifully captures day and night with a captivating performance of the main character. An impressive track of light and darkness of the human nature that creates a folk sonata of the war reveals hope".

The 23rd edition of the festival was held from 4 to 13 October.