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MUMBAI:
Of late, a spate of India-made films has been doing
the rounds at international film festivals and has been
suitably rewarded.
One
such film is director Karan Gour's Kshay, an intense psychological
study of a woman's obsession with an unfinished statue
of the Goddess Lakshmi. Shot in stark black-and-white,
the film has travelled to four international film festivals
already with many more in the offing. The film recently
won the 'Grand Jury Prize for Best Narrative Feature'
at the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles (IFFLA).
Said
producer Shaan Vyas," Kshay has taken us four years to complete
and was made with a two-man crew at most times: the
director Karan Gour and the Director of Photography
Abhinay Khoparzi. The film is about obsession made by
an obsessive person and, more importantly, the larger
issues it addresses of materialistic obsession and blind
faith in religion that are very relevant in today's
world."
And
the fact that it probably has the lowest budget of
all the feature films at the Indian Film Festival
of Los Angeles makes this win that much more exciting.
"It reinforces our belief that you don't need
big budgets to make a good movie. Four years of Karan
and Abhinay's relentless effort is paying off now,"
said Vyas.
Other
award winners were Gemma Atwal's Marathon Boy that
got the award for best documentary while an honorable
mention went to Rajan Khosa's Gattu.
The
award for the best short went to Neeraj Ghaywan's
Noise (Shor) and Ravi Kapoor's The 5, while actress
Meera Simhan won an award for her performance in Sujata,
each receiving an honorable mention.
Rajan
Khosa took home a second honour of the evening when
Gattu won the Audience Choice Award for Best Feature
while the Audience Choice award for best documentary
went to Gotham Chopra for his Decoding Deepak. Anirban
Roy won the Audience Choice Award for best short film
for Audacity (Aashprodha), according to a release.
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