Kaushik Ganguly and Riddhi Sen win big 9th SAARC Film Festival

Kaushik Ganguly’s Bengali film Nagarkirtan adds yet another feather to its cap. The film received awards for Best Feature Film, Best Original Score (Prabuddha Banerjee), Best Actor (Riddhi Sen) and Best Director (Kaushik Ganguly) at the 9th SAARC Film Festival.

The film received recognition for its ‘most sensitive and delicate employment of the emphatic power of cinema, not just in depicting truth but understanding beyond prejudice, cultural, religious and gender borders.’

The director was recognised for his ability ‘for taking full reins in giving humanity, nuance, colour, exigency, impetus and form to a narrative of beautiful sexual identity and self-creation, beyond the tragedies of social prejudice.’

On the other hand, lead actor Riddhi Sen was lauded ‘for his happily measured yet intricately beguiling portrayal of the inner life and outer transformations of a young boy coming out painstakingly from of its own constricting chrysalis into the light and embrace of self-acceptance as a woman', by the festival.

Beaming with joy, Sen shared, “It was totally unexpected to hear the results of SAARC 2019, I was not even aware that our film went to SAARC. Our entire team was surprised seeing this huge win. Last night, I got to know from our producer that SAARC has informed him that our film has got four awards and they have sent it to the Indian High commission. It’s a huge achievement for our film, our film competed with all the films of South Asia and bagged these four very prestigious awards. I’m grateful to my director Kaushik Ganguly for winning this award.”

Nagarkirtan also won four National Awards in India, including The Best Actor, The Special Jury (Feature Film), Best Costume Design and Best Make-up Artiste in 2017.