Ashutosh Gowariker reveals why Adah Sharma’s The Kerala Story won 2 National Awards despite controversy & opposition: – Firstpost

In the announcement of the 71st National Awards, which took place yesterday, Ahah Sharma starrer The Kerala Story directed by Sudipto Sen bagged two honours, including Best Cinematographer for Prasantanu Mohapatra and director for Sen.

This decision of the jury has garnered severe backlash on social media due to the film’s controversial theme of religious conversion.

Now, Ashutosh Gowariker, the filmmaker and jury head, revealed the reason behind The Kerala Story getting two awards.

“One is the cinematography award. The cinematography in The Kerala Story was very stark and realistic. It didn’t ever try to overpower the narrative; the images were created within the realm of things. So, we applauded that,” said Gowariker to NDTV while talking about the Best DoP award.

Speaking about Sen being named as the best director, he added, “It’s a difficult topic and to convey that with the kind of clarity that as a jury we felt the need to applaud it.”

Produced by Vipul Amrutlal Shah, The Kerala Story also featured Yogita Bihani, Sonia Balani, and Siddhi Idnani.

Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan slammed the jury for honouring the movie with two National awards and said it was “extremely unfortunate” that a film which insults Kerala’s secular traditions and defames it before the world was honoured at the national film awards.

“This also insults the great cultural heritage of Indian cinema and sends out the message that art should be used to destroy the secularism of our country and replace it with communalism,” he said, prior to inaugurating the Kerala Film Policy Conclave here.

He said that the film community needs to wake up against such a “distorted” portrayal of Kerala and put an end to such moves.

Vijayan also said that it needs to be examined why the Kerala film industry has not received the level of recognition it deserves and hoped that it would be a topic of discussion at the conclave held at the Sankaranarayanan Thampi Hall inside the Legislative Assembly complex in Thiruvananthapuram.

He further said that the conclave was organised with the aim of formulating a comprehensive film policy for the all-round growth and development of Malayalam cinema, as it was imperative to modernise and expand it with the changing times.

State Cultural Affairs Minister Saji Cherian, who presided over the event, said that it was decided to hold such a conclave following the recommendations in the Justice Hema Committee report to tackle issues of sexual exploitation, discrimination, wage disparity and unfair working conditions prevalent in the film industry.

With inputs from PTI