Director Jayant Digambar Somalkar\u2019s debut Marathi film \u2018Sthal\u2019 (A Match) won the top Asian award on Sunday at the Toronto International Film Festival for its sheer raw power.
The film is the story of the fight of a young woman against the oppressive patriarchy which forces its decisions on her life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dedicating the NETPAC (Network for the Promotion of Asia Pacific Cinema) award to \u201call the brave women of the world who challenge their adverse circumstances,\u201d Somalkar said this film is also very personal to him \u201cas it was shot in my hometown where I was born.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Meenakshi Shedde, who as TIFF\u2019s Senior Programme Advisor for South Asia, was instrumental in bringing the film to this festival, said: \u201cI am absolutely delighted with the NETPAC Award going to Sthal (A Match).\u201d
She said, \u201cIt is a raw and powerful film about women who are paraded before potential suitors to arrange their marriages. It\u2019s extremely humiliating for them as they are treated like slaves or products. They are assessed for\u2026what is your name, what is your height, what is your education, can you cook, can you farm \u2026 and no question is ever asked of the boys. This process of leading to marriage (hopefully) is so humiliating and devastating for the girls\u2019 families \u2013 both financially and psychologically.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Shedde said the award for this film at the world\u2019s premier film festival also assumes significance as the film subtly highlights the deep economic distress in the so-called farmers\u2019 suicide belt of the Vidharbha region of Maharashtra.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis film is the director\u2019s biographical story as he shot it in his house and own village of Dongargaon in the cotton belt which is also tragically called the farmers\u2019 suicide belt in the Vidharbha region. So he is also addressing the deeper socio-economic issues in which he places the context of this extremely powerful film.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She added, \u201cThe minute I saw the film I think one of the things that attracted me terribly was that it has a raw and wonderful authentic energy which is very distinct from other kinds of film-making where the original voice may be lost or over-polished. But A Match has that raw and original power.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Director Jayant Digambar Somalkar\u2019s debut Marathi film \u2018Sthal\u2019 (A Match) won the top Asian award on Sunday at the Toronto International Film Festival for its sheer raw power.The film is the story of the fight of a young woman against the oppressive patriarchy which forces its decisions on her life. Dedicating the NETPAC (Network for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":378010,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[688],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-377908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-infotainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=377908"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377908\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/378010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=377908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=377908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=377908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}