Films shortlisted for this award included the disturbing narrative of the 54 missing Indian POWs in the powerful yet subtle anti-war film Hope dies last in war by Supriyo Sen.
Also in reckoning was the post tsunami film, From Dust by Dhruv Dhawan, which documents the aftershocks of the great disaster in a touching account following various characters left clinging to shards of hope in a future buried under bureaucracy and commercial interestes.
Finally the jury had no choice but to split the award between two films.
The first is the ambitious undertaking of bringing the Bombay of past and present together in a staggering panorama of images, interviews, fiction narratives and non fiction sequences in the artful yet candid, Seven Islands & A Metro by Madhusree Dutta.
The award is shared by a film which revisits the location of an event which shook the foundations of secular India. In the tug of war since ensued, the original inhabitants have been reduced to helpless witnesses to their own town held hostage by politicians and religious fanatics. In a journey interweaving an internal monologue with visual metaphors and personal accounts we go behind the headlines and meet the real people and see the real place that is called Ayodhya in Vani Subramanian's Ayodhya Gatha.
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