Thaindian News

Locarno (Switzerland), Aug 9 (IANS) Mumbai-based Shanker Raman and San Francisco-based Alka Raghuram were Tuesday night named the winners of the Grant Open Doors prize at the award ceremony at the Locarno International Film Festival here. Both the filmmakers share the prize money of 50,000 CHF (approximately $67,466).

Shanker won 30,000 CHF (over $40,000) for his script “The Trapper’s Snare”, a fiction film about the conflict in Sri Lanka. Alka walked away with 20,000 CHF (over $25,000) for her documentary “Burqa Boxers”, about young Muslim girls learning boxing at a gym in Kolkata and their determination to knock out a few stereotypes.

While Shanker is yet to start shooting the film, Alka has shot some parts of her script already.

Geneva-based Indian filmmaker Anup Singh won the CNC (Centre national du cinema et de l’image animee, France) prize of 7,000 euros (7,400 CHF) for “Lasya”, a fiction film about life on Mumbai streets.

The International Relations ARTE Prize of 6,000 euros (6,340 CHF) went to Kolkata-based filmmaker Sourav Sarangi for his project “Char…The Island Within”. It is a documentary film which tells the story of people living near the India and Bangladesh border, and the Ganga river plays a key character in it.

The Open Doors, a part of Locarno International Film Festival, is organised with the collaboration of, and funded by, the Swiss Agency for Development and Collaboration of the Federal Department of Swiss Affair (DFAE - Switzerland). It aims at casting light on film projects from countries whose cinema is still developing, and it commits to enable them to find co-production partners.

The ongoing Open Doors Co-Production Lab, which started Saturday, had shortlisted 12 films including Raina’s “Aharbal Falls”, Natasha Mendonca’s “Ajeeb Aashiq”, Partho Sen-Gupta’s “Arunoday”, Satish Manwar’s “Jat Panchayat”, Sidharth Srinivasan’s “Samaadhi”, Vasant Nath’s “Sebastian Wants To Remember”, Lilium Leonard’s “Thread” and Ashish Avikunthak’s “Vidhvastha”.