17th Pune International Film Festival – Awards 2019

By Asian Film Festival on January 27, 2019 • ( Leave a comment )

We present the list of winners of the 17th Pune International Film Festival that took place from January 10th – 17th, 2019 in Pune, India.

“Prabhat” Best International Film

Girls of the Sun (Les Filles Du Soleil) by Eva Husson – France | 2018 – 115 min.

Somewhere in Kurdistan, Bahar, commander of the “Girls of the Sun” battalion, is preparing to liberate her hometown from the hands of extremists, hoping to find her son who is held hostage. Her army is made of those, who have suffered the worst at the hands of extremists. They have lost everything, but not hope, and desire to fight. A French journalist, Mathilde, comes to cover the attack and bear witness to the story of these exceptional warriors. Since their lives have been turned upside down, they have all been fighting for the same cause: Women, Life, Liberty.

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“Prabhat” Best International Film Director

Rodrigo Barriuso, Sebastian Barriuso for A Translator (Un Traductor)
Canada, Cuba | 2018 – 108 min.

In 1989 Havana, Russian literature professor Malin gets a mysterious note at the university with orders from the government sending him to a local hospital, where he learns that he is expected to act as translator between the Cuban doctors, and the families of young patients from the Chernobyl disaster. Initially raging against his new role, Malin is forced to stay on, and he eventually becomes deeply devoted to his patients. But while he becomes “king of the kids” at the hospital, his relationships with his pregnant wife and young son suffer. Meanwhile, life around all of them shifts as the “Special Period”—the economic crisis in Cuba that followed the dissolution of the Soviet Union—begins.

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MIT-SFT Human Spirit Award

My Own Good (Il Bene Mio) by Pippo Mezzapesa – Italy | 2018 – 94 min.

The last remaining inhabitant of Provvidenza, a village destroyed by an earthquake, Elia refuses to go along with the rest of the community, which has resettled in Nuova Provvidenza and put the past behind them. To Elia, his town is still alive, and thanks to the help of an old friend, Gesualdo, he strains to keep its memory alive as well. When the mayor orders him to abandon Provvidenza, Elia seems to be on the point of pulling up stakes, when he suddenly senses a strange presence. In fact, a young woman, Noor, is hiding in the rubble of the school, where Elia’s wife had lost her life. Noor is on the run, and this chance encounter, coupled with Elia’s own desire as keeper of the flame for Provvidenza, brings him up against a decision from which there is no going back.

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Audience Award – World Film

A Translator (Un Traductor) by Rodrigo Barriuso, Sebastian Barriuso
Canada, Cuba | 2018 – 108 min.

Audience Award – Marathi Film

Dithee (Seeing) by Sumithra Bhave – India | 2018 – 89 min.

Ramji is a humble iron-smith who follows the age-old Waarkari tradition prevalent in Western India, where millions of pilgrims walk for a couple of weeks from the holy town of Alandi to Pandharpur, the abode of Lord Vitthal. His world comes crashing down after his only son drowns in a flooding river. Ramji is not only sad but also angry at God, to whom he has been devoted since decades. He and his friends are trying to make sense of the tragedy. Destiny offers Ramji a chance to attain the ultimate realization that birth and death are not different from each other, by helping a troubled cow deliver a calf. Thus unfolds a tale of death and life, of grief and ecstasy – where the seeming opposites just collapse and dissolve into the oneness of being.

Best Marathi Screenplay

Chumbak (The Lottery) by Saurabh Bhave, Sandeep Modi
India | 2018 -. 118 min.

Chumbak is a coming-of-age story of a 15year old table-cleaning waiter-boy in Mumbai, Baalu who is on the crossroads of his aspirations and morals.
Baalu dreams of escaping this wretched life with a small little business of his own, a little sugarcane juice stall near his village’s public Bus-Stand. Having exhausted all means, a desperate and broke Baalu along with his street-smart friend Dhananjay a.k.a Disco make a plan to put together the money with the only way they can think of – the infamous ‘Nigerian SMS Scam’. But, of the hundreds expected to respond to his text messages, no one but one man falls for it, a simple poor mentally slow villager called Prasanna.
Caught between his guilt and conscience of fleecing such a man and the greed to fulfill his ambitions, Baalu will now have to make a choice. Chumbak is the story of these choices for Baalu that shall shape his life.

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Best Marathi Film Actress

Devika Daftardar for Naal (The umbilical Cord) – India | 2018 – 117 min.

Chaitanya, an eight year old, mischievous boy is happy in his small little world. Living in a remote village in Maharashtra, along the banks of a river, he is fathered by a small time landlord and pampered by a loving and caring mother.
One fine day an uncle from his ancestral village visits his family. Before leaving he accidentally reveals that Chaitanya is adopted and his biological mother lives in their ancestral village. Curios and innocent Chaitanya develops a secret desire to go and meet his real mother. He plays all his cards to delay his grandmother’s travel to that village till his exams are finished. But when he finally sets out on this journey to meet his biological mother, it doesn’t go quite as he had anticipated

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