'Lucky' walks away with Biffes honour

South African movie ‘Lucky’ proved to be the lucky one to walk away with the Best Film award as curtains came down on the fourth edition of the Bangalore International Film Festival (Biffes-2011) on Thursday.

The film directed by Avie Luthra and produced by Christopher Wilmot features Kannada actor and theatre personality Jayashree.

The best director award was bagged by Feo Aladag for the movie ‘When We Leave’(German), while the Jury Special Mention Award went to the Chinese film ‘No 89, Shimen Road’ directed by Hoolun Shu.

A cash prize of Rs 10 lakh and Rs 5 lakh were awarded to ‘Lucky’ and ‘When We Leave’ respectively.

Under the Asian Cinema Section, the Netpac Award went to the Sri Lankan film ‘Flying Fish’ directed by Sanjeewa Pushpa Kumara, and was awarded a cash prize of Rs 2 lakh.

Under the Indian Cinema Section –– Chitrabharati –– ‘Nobel Chor’ directed by Suman Gosh bagged the award and a cash prize of Rs 2 lakh, while ‘Gandhi Smiles’ directed by Krish Joshi and ‘Puttakkana Highway’ directed by B Suresha jointly bagged the award under the Kannada Cinema Section.

‘Chintu School,’ directed by Sheshgiri Yelameli got the Jury Special Mention award.
The international awards were conferred by the Government of Karnataka, Karnataka Film Chamber of Commerce conferred the Asian awards and Suchitra Film Society and Karnataka Chalanachitra Academy conferred the Indian and Kannada awards respectively.

The closing ceremony also saw the organisers paying homage to some of the legends of Indian cinema, who passed away in the last decade. Shivaji Ganeshan, B V Karanth, Pandari Bai, Soundarya, Rajkumar, K K Mahajan, C Ashwath, Vishnuvardhan, K S Ashwath, Vaishali Kasaravalli, M V Krishnaswamy, B S Ranga, S Ramachandra, Mani Kaul, Shammi Kapoor and Dev Anand were all remembered. Governor H R Bharadwaj recollected his experiences with Rajkumar, M G Ramachandran (MGR), Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalitha and others.