Arati Kadav wins best director for The Astronaut and his Parrot

Arati Kadav and Ali Fazal. Credit: Special Arrangement

Filmmaker Arati Kadav is on cloud nine as her sci-fi film, The Astronaut and his Parrot, featuring Ali Fazal has won the ‘Best Director Award’ at the Fantasia Film Festival.

The writer-directors latest indie sci-fi film was screened in the competition section of the festival and garnered much-needed attraction from the audience.

The film is about a space explorer who, due to an accident, has been adrift in the void with a low supply of oxygen. In his final moments in space, he tries to desperately send messages to his daughter via signals but is received by a gaudy parrot in a fortune teller's stall.

Sharing her happiness, the elated Arati spoke to DH, she said “It’s quite a wonderful thing to be winning an award at Fantasia, which is one of the leading genre and sci-fi film festivals. I’m grateful to such an amazing team who has seen through this vision, and their passion is what has brought Us here. This win is for the amazing team, for the brilliant Ali Fazal who agreed to be part of this.”

Filmmaker Arati, who grew up in Nagpur, is based out of Mumbai and is a trained computer science engineer. She earlier worked as a software developer in the US before taking up filmmaking as her profession.

Arati has juggled various sides by working in advertising and music promos and six short films. Some of her work includes the minute-long Time Machine (2017), Her debut feature, Cargo (2019), is a science fiction drama. Her name was mentioned by BAFTA for ‘Breakthrough India participants for 2022’. The festival, which is being held till 3 August, is known as the world's leading genre-specific film festival and it will also screen at Sci-Fi London Film Festival.