As many as 16 Bengali feature films were submitted in the regional round. “That included ‘Ardhangini’, ‘Niharika’, ‘Mujib: The Making of a Nation’, ‘Deep Fridge’, ‘Padatik’, ‘Matripokhho’, ‘Raktabeej’, ‘Projapoti’, ‘Bablir Bornoporichoy’, ‘Rabindra Kabya Rahasya’, ‘Bijoyar Pore’, ‘Kabuliwala’, ‘Kurban’, ‘Fatafati’, ‘Abhagi’ and ‘Ami O Manohar’. As part of the central jury, we only saw the four Bengali feature films that made it to the final round. Those were ‘Ardhangani’, ‘Niharika’, ‘Mujib: The Making of a Nation’ and ‘Deep Fridge’. There was a neck-to-neck fight between ‘Deep Fridge’ and a film by a multiple national award-winning director. The jury unanimously wanted to give the award to a young director. Age and inexperience mattered since we wanted to recognise the efforts of a new voice,” added the 36-year-old jury member.‘Deep Fridge’ director told TOI, “My film was selected for the Indian panorama of the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) too. While the National Award for ‘Deep Fridge’ completes a circle for me, I would definitely want more films from Tollywood to win awards in the national competition with other language movies in the feature film section.”The story of Bengal’s talent is slightly different in the non-feature film category. The top award in the non-feature category was picked up by Soumyajit Ghosh Dastidar’s ‘Flowering Man’. His Swarna Kamal for the best non-feature film comes with prize money of Rs 3 lakh. There are two Rajat Kamal winners for Kolkata-based technicians. While editor Niladri Roy received it for ‘Moving Focus’, sound designer Shubharun Sengupta got it for ‘Dhundhgiri Ke Phool’.
