Panaji (Goa), December 9
The curtains came down on a vibrant and happening 35th International Film Festival of India here tonight with the Iranian film “Beautiful City” (Shar-e-Ziba) winning not only the Golden Peacock and a Rs 5-lakh prize for the best film by an Asian director (Asghar Farhadi) but also a Rs 2.5-lakh special jury award for the actor Faramarz Gharibian.
The Silver Peacock and the Rs 2.5-lakh prize for the most promising Asian director was bagged by Ekachai Uekrongthan from Thailand for his debut-making venture “Beautiful Boxer”.
Giving away the awards, Mr S. Jaipal Reddy, Minister for Information and Broadcasting, announced amidst a lot of cheering that the next festival would be held in Goa. This came as a personal vindication for Mr Manohar Parrikar, Chief Minister of Goa, who graced the occasion along with special invitee Preity Zinta.
Besides the three main prizes, the jury made a special mention of the Russian film “Old Women” by Gennady Sidorov.
Fifteen Asian films were in the reckoning and the five-member jury was headed by noted Indian filmmaker Mani Ratnam. He was indisposed today and went back from the Kala Academy venue before the closing ceremony started. A statement read on his behalf by jury member Mahmoud Kabil (Egypt) demanded selection of better films for the Asian competition section, thus indirectly expressing dissatisfaction about the quality of films this year.
India was represented by two films, Sanjay Sawant’s “Shwaas” (Marathi) and Anjan Dutta’s “Bow Barracks Forever” (English), which failed to win any awards.
The Oliver Stone $ 160-million Hollywood extravaganza “Alexander” was screened on the occasion. The organisers were trying to get its cast – Colin Farrell, Angelina Jolie, Val Kilmer, Jared Leto, Rosario Dawson and Anthony Hopkins – to Panjim but did not succeed.
Reviewed extensively in The Tribune, “Beautiful City” is indeed a masterpiece of storytelling, as mentioned in the citation by the jury. It is the heart-rending story of a young boy sentenced to death for killing his girlfriend. His sister and friend are trying desperately to persuade the father of the girl to accept blood money and let his sentence be converted into imprisonment, as is the law in Iran.
The role of the father of the girl is the highlight of the film and his silence evokes everything from his anger, wavering and piety while he is pestered by the kith and kin of the murderer.
Accepting the Golden Peacock award, director Asghar Farhadi said the first time he went to cinema, he had watched an Indian film and this love affair had now grown even stronger. He also accepted the acting award in the absence of Gharibian.
This is his second feature film after “Dancing in the Dust” (2003) which too had received several prizes in Iran’s national film festival and was successful in many international film festivals.
