Women directors sweep top awards at JIO MAMI MUMBAI FILM FESTIVAL with Star !
ANNOUNCES the award winners of its 19TH EDITION
Hansal Mehta’s film Omerta was the closing film of the festival
The 7–Day event (October 12th to October 18th, 2017) screened over 220 films from 51 countries including features, documentaries and short films.
Women directors sweep top awards at MAMI. Rima Das’s Village Rockstars wins the Golden Gateway award in the India Gold Category and Carla Simon’s Summer 1993 wins the Golden Gateway award in the International competition category. Both were present at the closing ceremony to receive their awards from the accomplished Juries in their categories.
Jio MAMI 19th Mumbai Film Festival with Star announced the winners across its 7 distinct categories this evening at a star-studded ceremony at the JW Marriott, Juhu. Attended by top of the line guests from the Indian and international film community, the Closing Night ceremony honoured the filmmakers in the various competition categories: INDIA GOLD, INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION, OXFAM-MAMI AWARD for best film in Gender Equality, BOOK AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE IN WRITING ON CINEMA, DIMENSIONS MUMBAI, MAMI-ROYAL STAG BARREL SELECT LARGE SHORT FILMS, HALF TICKET AND YOUNG CRITICS LAB.
Actors Radhika Apte and Sayani Gupta were the presenters for the evening. Following the ceremony, the Closing Night Party was attended by celebrities like Sonam Kapoor, Deepika Padukone, Shahid Kapoor, Rajkumar Hirani, Kabir Khan, Anurag Kashyap, Rajkummar Rao, Ashutosh Gowarikar, Konkona Sen Sharma, Vidhu Vinod Chopra to name a few.
Festival Director, Anupama Chopra said, “This has been a week long celebration of movies. I want to thank our enthusiastic audience and our generous partners for helping us make this edition of MAMI a roaring success.”
Uday Shankar, Chairman & CEO, Star India said, “Mumbai Academy of Moving Images (MAMI) has yet again proved that good storytelling not only entertains but also transcends existing boundaries of thought and imagination. As the festival draws to a close this year, we congratulate the organisers for offering an inspiring range of well crafted films cutting across themes, genres and cultures. We look forward to the next edition of the Mumbai Film Festival.”
Creative Director, Smriti Kiran said, “The love for the festival this year both in terms of the curation and operations has left me stumped. The passion of the delegates is exhilarating. Makes us want to do better. We have already started working on the next edition of the festival, which will also mark our 20th year. We will begin the year round programme right after the festival with a Special Screening of Disney’s Thor: Ragnarok. I can’t wait to start work again.”
“Globally, women seldom get fair credit and recognition for their work. There’s no shortage of talented female filmmakers out there, they just need a platform to shine. The Award is to support and encourage filmmakers to make films that break gender norms or challenge the conventional portrayal of women and girls.Village Rockstars deserves the award as it brings on screen the story of hope and aspirations of a young girl fighting inequality and disasters. We are delighted that another path-breaking film The Hungry received a special mention in this category.” saidRina Soni, Director of Oxfam India.
Here is a comprehensive list of the winners at MAMI in 2017 under various categories.
HALF TICKET
The Golden Gateway Award (Feature) – ‘The Day My Father Became A Bush’ by Nicole Van Kilsdonk
The Silver Gateway Award (Feature) – ‘Cloudboy’ by Melkeminne
The Golden Gateway Award (Short) – ‘Half a Life’ by Tamara Shogaolu
The Silver Gateway Award (Short) – ‘Mduduboy boy’ by Ella Smith
YOUNG CRITICS LAB AWARD
Young Critics Award- Yashvardhan Singh.
Young Critics Choice Award- ‘Village Rockstars’ by Rima Das.
BOOK AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE IN WRITING ON CINEMA
The Excellence in Writing on Cinema Award (Hindi) – ‘Lata: Sur Gatha’ by Yatindra Mishra
The Excellence in Writing on Cinema Award (English) – ‘Voices Of The Talking Stars’ by Madhuja Mukherjee.
Jury
Kiran Nagarkar (Head), Renuka Shahane, Ambarish Satwik and Sayema Rehman
Nominations
Behind the Scenes (Written by Aysha Iqbal, Viswamohan and Vimalmohan John- SAGE Publications)
Freedom: My Story (Written by Aruna Raje Patil- HarperCollins Publishers)
Lata: Sur Gatha (Written by Yatindra Mishra- Vani Prakashan)
Music, Masti, Modernity: The Cinema Nasir Husain (Written by Akshay Manwani- HarperCollins Publishers)
Sahir Samagra (Written by Sahir Ludhianvi- Rajkamal Prakashan)
Talkies: Cinema Ka Safar (Written by Ajay Brahmatmaj and Mayank Shekhar- Rajkamal Prakashan)
Voices of the Talking Stars (Written by Madhuja Mukherjee- SAGE Publications)
Woman at the Window (Written by Shoma Chatterjee- HarperCollins Publications)
Yesterday’s Films for Tomorrow (Written by P.K Nair- Film Heritage Foundation)
MAMI-OXFAM AWARD FOR BEST FILM ON GENDER EQUALITY
Deepika Padukone gave the Oxfam Award for Gender Equality to Rima Das for Village Rockstars
Special Jury Mention- ‘The Hungry’ by Bornila Chatterjee
Jury
Alankrita Srivastava, Vasan Bala and Gayatri Sivasubramaniam
Nominations
Village Rockstars (Rima Das)
Granny – Ajji (Devashish Makhija)
The Hungry (Bornila Chatterjee)
Checkmate- Turup (Ektara Collective)
Jio MAMI Reliance Foundation Award for Excellence in Digital Content
Special Jury Mention Award- ‘Detour’ by Sumi Mathai
The Silver Award– ‘Mandi’ by Yashovardhan Mishra.
The Golden Award- ‘Aishwarya Ki Behen’ by Nitesh Bhatia
Jury
Hansal Mehta (Head), Shakun Batra and Tannishtha Chatterjee
AUDIENCE CHOICE AWARD
Rajkummar Rao gave away the Audience Choice Award to the Hungarian drama ‘On Body and Soul’ by Ildiko Enyedi.
DIMENSIONS MUMBAI
The Golden Gateway Award: ‘Vacancy’ by Anurag Worlikar
The Silver Gateway Award:‘Wolf of Chawl Street’ by Pranav Bhasin.
The Jury Special Mention:‘Bambaiwale’ Director Chirag Suryavanshi.
Jury
Kabir Khan (Head), Tillotoma Shome, Dulquer Salman, Ruchika Oberoi
Nominations
Bambaiwale (Chirag Ashok Suryavanshi)
Bulbula (Bhanu Babbal)
Khada Watchman (Tapan Narendra Gaokar)
Lines (Aanandita Banerjee and Himanshu Tiwari)
Live (Ankit Sharma)
Made for Each Other (Akshay Ambadas Temkar)
Me (Ganesh Pawar)
Noorie (Kanishk Seth)
Pyaada (Deeksha Rathore and Kunal Ahuja)
Quell (Yash Solanki)
Susu (Abhishek Khan)
Taxidermy :Life after Death (Amol Narvekar)
Thakur Sahab (Aditya Gosar and Raghu Babbal)
The First Attempt (Amaan Shaikh)
The Last Story (Nupur Bajpai and Rishabh Kumar)
Vacancy (Anurag Bhupen Worlikar)
Wolf of Chawl Street (Pranav Bhasin)
INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION
The Golden Gateway Award– ‘Summer of 1993’ by Carla Simon
The Silver Gateway Award- ‘Quest’ by Jonatahn Olshefski
The Jury Grand Prize -‘The Wound’ by John Trengove.
Special Mention – ‘I Am Not A Witch’ by Rungano Nyoni.
The Special Mention – ‘Scary Mother’ by Ana Urushadze.
Jury
John Madden (Head), Celina Jade, Rajendra Roy and Konkona Sen Sharma
Nominations
Apostasy (Daniel Kokotagalo)
Bad Lucky Goat (Samir Oliveros)
I Am Not A Witch (Rungano Nyoni)
Montparnasse Bienvenue- Jeunefemme (Leonorserraille)
More-Daha (Onur Saylak)
Most Beautiful Island (Ana Asensio)
Oblivion Verses- Los Versos Del Oldideo (Alireza Khatami)
Quest (Jonathan Olashefski)
Scary Mother- Sashishi Deda (Ana Urushadze)
Summer 1993- Estiu 1993 (Carla Simon)
The Wound- Inxeba (John Trengove)
Winter Brothers- Vinterbrodre (Hlynur Palmason)
INDIA GOLD
The Golden Gateway Award – ‘Village Rockstars’ by Rima Das
The Silver Gateway Award-‘Machines’ by Rahul Jain
The Jury Grand Prize – ‘In the Shadows’ by Dipesh Jain
The Jury Special Mention – ‘Up, Down and Sideways’ by Anushka Meenakshi and Ishwar Srikumar.
The Jury Special Mention – ‘Sexy Durga’ by Sanal Kumar Sasidharan.
Jury
Clio Barnard (Head), Cao Baoping, Gyan Prakash, Talya Lavie and Alexandra Borbely
Nominations
Ashwatthama (Pushpendra Singh)
Checkmate- Turup (Ektara Collective)
Granny- Ajji (Devashish Makhija)
In the Shadows- Gali Guliyan (Dipesh Jain)
Juze (Miransha Naik)
Machines (Rahul Jain)
Ralang Road (Karma Takapa)
Up, Down and Sideways (Anushka Meenakshi, Iswar Srikumar)
Village Rockstars (Rima Das)
Zoo (Shlok Sharma)
S Durga (Sanal Kumar Sasidharan)
MAMI resumes its year round programme next week with the first screening in India of Disney’sThor:Ragnarok.
The celebratory evening ended with the announcement of the dates for the 20th Edition of Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival with Star 25th October – 1st November, 2018.
QUOTES
Sameena Mishra, the curator of Half Ticket said, “It’s my pride and privilege to bring to this festival films that children should be watching and would enjoy too. It’s all the more better as the ones I was rooting for won.”
Yashvardhan Singh, Winner of Young Critics Award said, “Thank you MAMI for giving this platform where we can learn various parameters of analysing movies.”
Rima Das, Winner of the Golden Gateway Award in the India Gold Category (Village Rockstars) said, “Thank you MAMI. When I started making movies, the movies were earlier selected in festival but my mother used to ask whether you will win. So this is to my mom.”
Yatindra Mishra, (Author, Lata- Sur Gatha) Winner of The Excellence in Writing on Cinema Award (Hindi) said, “I thank MAMI. This is an ode to the legendary Lata Mangeshkar who has contributed massively. Our publications Vani Prakashan, I extend my gratitude towards them. With this award, the Diwali evening is more alluring.”
Madhuja Mukherjee, (Author, Voices of The talking Stars), Winner of The Excellence in Writing on Cinema Award (English) said, “Thank you MAMI. It is a huge pleasure to be here. Special thanks to my publishers for sending it to the competition. While this idea that women working in this industry will change I hope after this award.”
Rima Das on winning the Oxfam Award for Gender Equality said, “Thank you Oxfam for this recognition. I would like to take this opportunity to thank my actors and crew for making this dream possible.”
Bornila Chatterjee Special Mention of Oxfam Award for Gender Equality said, “Thank you MAMI. It feels great.”
Sumi Mathai, (Detour), Special Mention, Jio MAMI Foundation Award for Excellence in Digital Content said, “This film is my best experience. I would like to thank Jio MAMI Digital Studio. I hope many more female directors can come out because of this platform.”
Yashovardhan Mishra, (Mandi),Winner of Silver Award, Jio MAMI Foundation Award for Excellence in Digital Content said, “Thank you so much Reliance Foundation. It is difficult to make films because of the money that is required. But thanks to such a platform new ideas and films get a space to be presented. I would like to dedcate this award to the farmers.”
Nitesh Bhatia, (Aishwarya ki Behen),Winner of Golden Award, Jio MAMI Foundation Award for Excellence in Digital Content said, “Thank you honourable jury members. Thank you Jio MAMI. I am very overwhelmed.”
Speaking on the occasion Kabir Khan said, “As mentioned in the opening, short films and digital content is the future and all the filmmakers have captured the spirit of Mumbai.”
Carla Simon, Winner of International Competititon Golden Gateway Award (Summer of 1993) said, “Its been an incredible experience. It’s my first visit to India. Thank you MAMI.”
Jonathan Olshefski, Winner of International Competition of Silver Gateway Award(Quest) said, “I make films to make friends, I dedicate this awrd to the people of Philadelphia.”
Rahul Jain, Winner of Silver Gateway Award in the India Gold Category said, “Thank you so much MAMI. First time when I approached the producer with the script I was told there is nothing new about knowing the poverty of India. I was adamant to show that seeing the poverty is not enough.”
