As the recent release Saand Ki Aankh (2019) closed out the 21st edition of the Mumbai Film Festival, the organizers, the Mumbai Academy of the Moving Image (MAMI) handed out the awards on closing night, 24 October.
The big winners were Prateek Vats's satire Eeb Allay Ooo! which won the Golden Gateway award and a cash prize of Rs25 lakh. Lead actor Shardul Bhardwaj picked up a special jury mention for his work. The Indian Gold jury was made up of producer Franklin Leonard, IMDb CEO Colin Needham, Cannes film festival programmer Cristian Jeune and Grainne Humphreys, festival director at the Dublin Film Festival.
Gitanjali Rao's debut feature film also won two awards. It won the runner-up Silver Gateway award and a cash prize of Rs15 lakh, and shared the Manish Acharya award for New Voices in Indian Cinema with Achal Mishra’s Gamak Ghar.
Saurav Rai's Nimtoh won the Grand Jury Prize for screenwriting for his Nepali-language feature debut. Aise Hee's Mohini Sharma was also given a Special Jury Mention for her lead turn as a widow wanting to live life for herself in the Kislay film. The film picked up the Film Critics Guild award and a Special Jury Mention by the guild went to Deepti Gupta’s documentary Shut Up Sona.
For the international competition, Ljubomir Stefanov and Tamara Kotevska’s Honeyland won the Golden Gateway award while Rodd Rathken’s Buoyancy won the Silver Gateway award. Suhaib Gasmelbari’s Sudanese documentary Talking About Trees won the Grand Jury Prize. Another Sudanese film, Amjad Abu Alala’s You Will Die At Twenty, shared a Special Jury mention with Carlo Sironi’s Sole.
The international competition jury was led by Palestinian-Dutch filmmaker Hany Abu-Assad and included Tamil filmmaker Vetrimaaran, Hindi filmmaker Zoya Akhtar, executive director of the Telluride Film Festival Julie Huntsinger, and Mark Adams, artistic director of the Edinburgh International Film Festival.
Danish Renzu’s The Illegal was given the Special Award for Discovering India, in Association with Turkish Airlines, by section curator Uma Da Cunha and film critics Mike Cahill and Namrata Joshi.
After all the awards were handed out, festival director Anupama Chopra and artistic director Smriti Kiran announced the dates for the 22nd edition: 5–12 November 2020.