Nagarkirtan wins big at SAARC film festival

It was a moment of great honour for Kaushik Ganguly when Prakash Javadekar, Minister of Information and Broadcasting, took to Twitter on Tuesday to congratulate him for bagging four awards at the prestigious SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) film festival 2019. Kaushik’s

Nagarkirtan

, a love story of a transwoman and a flautist, has won big at the ninth edition of the film festival, as it was honoured with the Best Feature Film, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Original Score awards. When we reached out to him, the filmmaker said, “It is a huge honour that the I&B minister congratulated the team. We, in Bengal, work under a lot of constraints and such awards are big encouragements.” Kaushik said he wasn’t expecting a big win at SAARC. “We always send our films to international festivals hoping that they would win. We feel sad when they don’t. Everyone loves to win awards and I’m very happy to be honoured with four awards at SAARC,” he added.

An elated Kaushik said he wants to share the award with the entire Bengali film fraternity. “It’s not just for the Nagarkirtan team. I want to share this with our fraternity. We are all working towards making the industry proud. This, to me, is a major step towards it,” he said. Riddhi Sen, who delivered a career-defining performance in the film, took to social media to share his thoughts. “Another BIG win for Nagarkirtan. Nagarkirtan wins four awards at the immensely prestigious SAARC (places includes — Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives , Nepal , Pakistan and Sri Lanka). Humbled, thank you SAARC and above all, to my director Kaushik Ganguly, no amount of ‘thank you’ is enough for you (sic).”
Last year, Nagarkirtan won big at the 65th

National Film Awards

, with four honours to its credit — Special Jury, Best Actor, Best Costume and Best Makeup Artist.

Na Bole Wo Haram, a 20-minute film by debutant director Nitish Patankar, bagged the Best Short Film' award, while Walking With the Wind by Praveen Morchhale received the Special Jury award for direction and story.