Sanal Kumar Sasidharan’s Malayalam indie drama “Sexy Durga” won the prestigious The Hivos Tiger Award — which includes a cash prize of 40,000 euros ($43,142) — at the ongoing International Film Festival of Rotterdam.
The festival which commenced on January 25 will conclude on Sunday.
On the official website of the festival, it was announced that “Sexy Durga” won The Hivos Tiger award.
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The jury admired the film for “its daring and resourceful approach in creating a mood of constant tension, providing an insight into multi-layered power dynamics of gender, class and authority”.
There were seven other films that competed for the coveted award.
A story about the patriarchal society of Kerala, the film stars Rajshri Deshpande as Durga, apart from a supporting cast of Kannan Nayar, Vedh, Sujeesh KS and Arun Sol.
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On hearing the news, an excited Anurag Kashyap tweeted on Saturday: “Sanal Kumar Sasidharan’s ‘Sexy Durga’ just won the Tiger at the Rotterdam film festival. Probably, the first Indian film to do so.”
Kashyap also wrote that the film is not about Goddess Durga, and asked people who might think of protesting against it, to just “chill”.
Known to herald the indie wave in Malayalam filmdom, Sanal is widely popular for helming “Ozhivudivasathe Kali”, the path-breaking political satire which released last year.