Correspondent
IMPHAL, Jan 24: Manipur filmmaker Haobam Paban Kumar’s feature film Nine Hills One Valley received the Special Mention Award in the Film Bazaar Recommends (FBR) Section of the Film Bazaar 2020, which was held online from January 16 to 21, coinciding with the International Film Festival of India 2020.
Nine Hills One Valley was among 19 feature films selected for the FBR Section of the Film Bazaar 2020 organised by the National Film Development Corporation Limited under the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.
Director Sreejith Karanavar’s Konkani-language film Today Me Tomorrow You got the top award in the FBR section while the Special Mentions in this section went to Nine Hills One Valley and The Cloud And The Man, a Bengali-language project from Abhinanda Banerjee.
Paban Kumar’s film in Manipuri and Tangkhul languages is about Ahum, a tribal from the hills who is on his way to Imphal city in the valley to meet his daughter before she leaves for New Delhi in search of job. During the course of his journey, he encounters different people and their stories, making the viewers witness to the cruelty of ethnic conflicts.
Kumar said, “I have been witnessing and hearing the ever-increasing ethnic divide between different communities in Manipur for land, forest, culture and identity since my childhood. This film is also a testimony of the brutishness of ethnic clash narrated by the victims using both the non-fiction and fiction genres,” he added.