Ritesh Batra, Irrfan and Dabba win at Dubai Film Festival

by Meenakshi Shedde India picked up key awards at the recently-concluded 10th Dubai International Film Festival (DIFF).  Dabba (The Lunchbox) picked up Best Actor for Irrfan Khan for Muhr Asia Africa Feature, while its director and scriptwriter Ritesh Batra earned a Special Mention for Best Script in the same competition section. “I am very happy for Lunchbox,” says Ritesh Batra, looking natty in a black tux. “It’s wonderful to be honoured at the Dubai film festival, especially before the Middle East premiere of the film. In fact, I wrote the script of Lunchbox sitting in a restaurant in Cairo, after we had finished the shoot of my short film Café Regular, Cairo.” Unfortunately, Irrfan Khan was unable to collect his Best Actor award personally, but Batra said that when he texted him to inform him of his win, he texted back, “Was it funny or sad?” It was continuing a joke that has been playing out since the shooting of Dabba. It was the standard question when, according to Batra, when they’d “tried to find moments in a scene that were either funny or sad or both, and it was a delicate line.” Batra also said, “I was very delighted when the audience in Dubai remarked that the film was both funny and sad. It is really what we had hoped to achieve.” [caption id=“attachment_1289395” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Irrfan Khan in The Lunchbox. IBN Live.[/caption] Singapore-based filmmaker and anthropologist Sandeep Ray won Best Director for Shirno Bahu (Thin Arms) for Muhr AsiaAfrica Short. His poignant 10 minute short, in Bengali, films his mother as she undergoes cancer treatment. Ray, whose exquisite documentary Kokkho Poth (The Sound of Old Rooms) was in DIFF in 2011, said, “I am delighted to receive this best director award for Shirno Bahu. It tells me that no film is too short, no story is too small. Take the time out from your busy lives, even if it means taking a small financial hit, and go spend some time with your parents. You will never ever regret doing this.” Recalling the experience of shooting this intimate, black and white film on his octogenarian mother Shipra Ray, he says, “I went to be with my mother during her cancer treatment and it soon became evident that she was on her last days. As I filmed her, I realized that we project our own fears on aging people. She wasn’t necessarily preoccupied with her death, but rather looked forward to small day-to-day joys, like the mango tree outside her window. It gave her great pleasure to gift people a mango from her tree. This film gave us a game to play and it took away some of the tediousness of those days. She would appear uninterested in the process and yet listen carefully to every direction I gave her. Like all children with a beautiful mother, we used to tell her she ought to be a film star. She became one in her afterlife. I am sad she couldn’t see the film. But she winked at me from wherever she is.” Other winners at DIFF included Tsai Ming Liang who won Best Director for Stray Dogs (Taiwan), a powerful but densely artistic film that has been likened by many to an art installation because of how stylized it is. The film is about a family that is on the fringes of Taipei society. Anthony Chen’s Ilo Ilo won Best Film, both in the Muhr AsiaAfrica Feature section. This debut film about a Filipino maid and the family she works for charmed audiences at the Mumbai Film Festival too. The brilliant Omar by Hany Abu-Assad (Palestine, UAE) won both Best Director and Best Film in the Muhr Arab Feature section.