Amid the entire IFFI controversy and jury members resigning from the panel, veteran filmmaker Shyam Benegal has backed the resignations and said that the government should not support people who do not want the film to be shown. Instead, they should support those who want to show the film.
Filmmaker Sujoy Ghosh resigned as head of the jury of the Indian Panorama of the 48th International Film Festival of India (IFFI) after the final selection saw the exclusion of two films, S Durga and Nude.
Benegal told ANI, “The government should not support those people who do not want the film to be shown. Instead, support those who want to show the film. The government decided that a couple of films chosen by jury shouldn’t be there. If they override what jury does, their position becomes untenable.”
He further added, “So jury or its chairman will have to resign. If a jury has been constituted and you disagree with their choice, then what is that jury supposed to be doing. What Sujoy Ghosh did is a correct thing.”
Veteran actor Raza Murad noted that the government does not generally tell the jury to not screen any movie.
“The jury is an independent body in itself. They know which film is to be shown and which is to be not. If the government has told them to not show some movies, this does not happen quite frequently. But why did this happen? The reason is only known to the government or the almighty,” Murad told ANI.
Meanwhile, former FTII chairman Gajendra Chauhan backed the government decision on removing the 'wrong films". Chauhan said, “It is on Ghosh if he wants to continue on the post or not. But I want to congratulate the Government of India, the Ministry of I&B for taking such a step. Their view is very clear that no wrong film, no film that is objectionable to the ministry, should go to the festival and the mass.”
All these responses have come after the 13-member jury, led by Ghosh, has shown their discomfort on the removal of two films from the final list, despite their approval
S Durga is a Malayalam film by Sanal Kumar Sasidharan, while Nude is a Marathi drama by National Award winning director Ravi Jadhav.
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