Entries by students of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), India’s well-known institution of its kind, have swept the top three awards at the just-concluded 11th Indian Film Festival of Bhubaneswar (IFFB).

The IFFB had shortlisted 15 entries from top-ranked film institutions of the nation for its competitive section in the students’ film category.

“Wet Blue Tarpaulin”, a bilingual film in Hindi-Marathi made in 2019 by Anunay Barbhuiya, claimed the first prize while “Bhumigat” (Underground Tales) made by Pradyatan Bera in Hindi made in 2017 bagged the second prize. Special Jury mention went to the trilingual film “Door Shaam Tak” (Far In Night) made in Hindi, Tamil and English by Syed Maisam Ali Shah in 2018.

“Wet Blue Tarpaulin” poignantly portrays the story of a migrant from Assam working in a Marathi restaurant in Pune who has to make a forged document to continue working in the city while struggling to contact his wife back in Assam, informed Anunay, who made the film.

“Through faces and bodies of real life labourers in ‘Bhumigat’, emerges an epistolary account of a daily wage owner who suddenly finds himself out of work one day. As rampant industrialisation surges, a new class is born - a crowd of nomadic migrant workers whose lives are a series of transitions in search of work. Using folk tale and memory as tools of narration the film invites us to witness a rapidly changing world through their eyes. Delving upon universal themes of identity, memory, love, faith, loss of home and the eternal search for home - the film is a social commentary on the timeless master slave dialectic in the new, globalised world order,” elaborated Pradyatan, the filmmaker.

“Door Shaam Tak” revolves round the story of a train journey spanning over an entire day of an adolescent boy with his football teammates and

coach, stated Shah, who has made the movie.