It was stonewalled at the Indian Panorama because of the controversy over its title, but the organisers of International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK 2017) have announced a special screening of Sanal Kumar Sasidharan's award-winning film S Durga as a "mark of protest".
Kerala Chalachithra Academy chairman Kamal on Thursday announced that the film will be screened during the fest in Thiruvananthapuram to protest its exclusion from the International Film Festival of India in Goa."That it was not screened at IFFI even after a Kerala High Court verdict shows there is a clear political agenda," Kamal said.
Ironically, Sasidharan himself had earlier withdrawn his film from the Kerala fest after it was included in the low-profile category of Malayalam Cinema Today. After the IFFK organisers pegged the Goa fiasco to offer him a special screening, the filmmaker agreed.
"Though they are doing it very late I think I should do that because there are a lot of film lovers who want to see this film at IFFK. I’m definitely going to screen the film if they give me a decent slot," Sasidharan told News18.
S Durga narrates the horrifying experience of a hitchhiking couple and has won critical acclaim at several international film festivals, including International Film Festival Rotterdam, Guanajuato International Film Festival in Mexico and Armenia's Yerevan International Film Festival.
S Durga along with Ravi Jadhav's Nude, was dropped by the ministry even though they were included in the Panorama list by a 13-member jury, prompting panel chief Sujoy Ghosh and members Apurva Asrani and Gyan Correa to resign.
Sasidharan, whose other two films have won state awards, also talked about why an IFFK screening was special to him."I grew up watching films screened at IFFK, I have no formal film education. It's my university," he said.
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