‘Mayar Janjal’ wins best feature film jury award in Italy
Actress Aupee Karim returns to the big screen through Maya Janjal after a long hiatus
Mayar Janjal (Debris of Desire), a Bangladesh-India co-production, won the Jury Award for Best Feature Film in Italy.
Directed by Indranil Roy Chowdhury and produced by Jasim Ahmed, Mayar Janjal won the award among nine official selections of Encounter with Asian Cinema at the competition section of the 21st edition of the Asiatic Film Festival in Rome.
The festival started on 18 December and ended on Wednesday with the announcement of the award. The invited motion pictures were shown through online screening this year due to the coronavirus epidemic.
Earlier, Mayar Janjal took place in the official selection of Shanghai International Film Festival and Moscow International Film Festival.
Although nominated for the Asian New Talent Award at the Shanghai Festival, the awards ceremony was canceled this year due to the epidemic.
Aupee Karim worked for the big screen through Maya Janjal after a long hiatus. Her character in the film is a married girl named Soma from Kolkata. She has a family of an unemployed husband - played by popular actor from calcutta Ritwick Chakraborty, and a child.
Aupee Karim's debut in the film industry was through "Bachelor" in 2004. She did not act in films since the first one and returned on the big screen with Mayar Janjal.
The screenplay of the film has been arranged on the basis two stories written by fiction writer Manik Bandyopadhyay. The film was shot in Dhaka and Kolkata.
The other main characters in the film are played by Sohail Rana (Satya) of Bangladeshi playgroup "Prachyanat", Chandreyi Ghosh (Beauty) from Calcutta and Bratya Basu (Ganesh Babu), Minister for Information Technology of West Bengal.
Indranil Roy Chowdhury first directed in the film "Foring" in 2013. He then directed a short film for television called "Ekti Bengali Bhuter Golpo – Story of a Bengali Ghost' and "Bhalobasar Shohor" –(City of Love).
The film is being produced by Bangladeshi producer Jasim Ahmed. An Indian institution named Flipbook co-produced the movie.
Jasim Ahmed has gained fame at home and abroad by directing short films "Daag – (stain)", "A pair of sandals" and "Chocolate".