Distancing himself from Nadav Lapid’s statement on ‘The Kashmir Files’ at the closing ceremony of IFFI, filmmaker Sudipto Sen on Tuesday said the Israeli filmmaker made the remarks in his “personal capacity”.
Stating that all winners were chosen “unanimously”, Sen, a member of the International Competition section, said that after the meeting with the festival director, and the subsequent press conference, Lapid should not have shared his “personal opinion” at a “public platform”.
He told The Indian Express on Tuesday: “Nadav went to speak…as the jury chairman of the International Competition. However, the statements he made there were in his personal capacity. Whatever we had to say as part of the Jury Board about the films in competition, we said in the official presentation to the festival director and other officials on November 27, and later at a press conference. We are proud of the selection, but we are hurt by Nadav’s action.”
Mumbai-based Sen, writer-director of films such as ‘Akhnoor’, ‘Aasma’, ‘Lucknow Times’ and ‘The Last Monk’, whose controversial film upcoming film ‘The Kerala Story’ “will be ready for release by January-end”, said the jury watched a selection of 15 international and Indian feature films competing for the top awards in the international section.
“We got 22 films to watch. Out of them, five were chosen for awards. To select the winners we followed different parameters such as artistic, sociological, aesthetics and technical qualities,” he said. “Officially, we were supposed to discuss those five films which were chosen for awards. We were not supposed to discuss in public about those which were not considered for awards.” He said even though Perfect Number, renowned Polish film director Krzysztof Zanussi’s latest film, was in competition, they couldn’t consider it for an award. “So you can imagine how tough the competition was. We discussed the merits and demerits of every film,” he said.
