Screenwriters Association shares Best Story, Screenplay, Dialogue nominees for first awards

The Screenwriters Association (SWA) has announced the nominations for the Best Story, Best Screenplay, Best Dialogue and Best Debut Writer categories for the SWA Awards 2020.

The jury comprised Urmi Juvekar, Saket Chaudhary, Atul Tiwari, Vinay Shukla and Ashok Mishra.

SWA president Robin Bhatt, general secretary Sunil Salgia and screenwriter Anjum Rajabali were part of the announcement while the virtual press conference was anchored by filmmaker Sridhar Rangayan.

Following is the full list of nominations:

Best Story
Anubhav Sinha and Gaurav Solanki for Article 15 (2019)
Devanshu Singh and Satyanshu Singh for Chintu Ka Birthday (2019)
Reema Kagti and Zoya Akhtar for Gully Boy (2019)
Abhishek Chaubey and Sudip Sharma for Sonchiriya (2019)
Ivan Ayr for Soni (2019)

Best Screenplay
Anubhav Sinha and Gaurav Solanki for Article 15
Niren Bhatt for Bala (2019)
Devanshu Singh and Satyanshu Singh for Chintu Ka Birthday 
Reema Kagti and Zoya Akhtar for Gully Boy 
Vasan Bala for Mard Ko Dard Nahin Hota (2019)

Best Dialogues
Anubhav Sinha and Gaurav Solanki for Article 15
Niren Bhatt for Bala
Reema Kagti and Zoya Akhtar for Gully Boy 
Ravinder Randhawa and Sumit Saxena for Hamid (2019)
Sudip Sharma for Sonchiriya

Best Debut Writer
Devanshu Singh and Satyanshu Singh for Chintu Ka Birthday
Sandeep Pandey for Chousar Firangi
Ravinder Randhawa for Hamid
Aadish Keluskar for Jaoon Kahan Bata Ae Dil (2018)
Ivan Ayr and Kislay for Soni

Speaking about the awards, Rajabali said in an official statement, “The time to honour the writer is here. And what better way than for a writers’ association to do it. There is no greater pride for a writer than to have [his or] her work endorsed by peers who understand writing. SWA is fulfilling its aim to bring the writer centre-stage. Kudos to the SWA Awards committee led by Sridhar Rangayan, Richa Singh Gautam, Jagriti Thakur and their teams for the impeccable transparency of the judging process. Way to go, SWA!”

The nominees were selected from among 167 films that were released in 2019 and submitted by the makers to the awards committee. The winners will be announced next Sunday.

Reacting to his film Article 15 being nominated in more than one category, Anubhav Sinha said, “I am so happy to be nominated by the Screenwriters Association for Article 15 for writing awards, and it is so wonderful that your peers, your seniors think what you wrote was worthy of such a distinction. Thank you so much, jury. Thank you so much, Screenwriters Association.”

Filmmaker Vasan Bala was also delighted to see Mard Ko Dard Nahin Hota being nominated. “Extremely thrilled to be acknowledged with this nomination for the first ever SWA Awards," the writer-director said. "Thank you and hope the awards keep growing in strength in the years to come.”

Speaking about the relevance of the awards, filmmaker Saket Chaudhary commented, “Good to see such awards at a time when other awards are TRP awards.”