‘National award for Feluda documentary big encouragement’

Kolkata, Aug 9 (IANS) Bengali director Sagnik Chatterjee who bagged the National Award for Best Debut Non-Feature Film for his documentary on Satyajit Ray's sleuth Feluda, rates the recognition as a big encouragement, and says it would inspire more people to come up with such efforts.

His documentary "Feluda: 50 Years of Ray's Detective" revisits the journey of the fictional character.

"It is a film that I always wanted to make. In India, it is very difficult to make documentaries on self-funding and the award is really enjoyable. I think this will encourage more people to come up," Chatterjee told IANS.

He recalled how his producer left due to some problem and he acquired the money through crowdfunding. The filmmaker dedicated his success to the technicians, all Feluda fans, his teacher at film school Yogesh Mathur and Satyajit Ray's son Sandip Ray.

Chatterjee is planning two feature films- a one-room thriller and another based on Ray's story. He will start working on of them around November.

Asked if he plans to make more documentaries, he said: "I have a long-pending project on football but it will not start off before the feature films".

Actress cum filmmaker Churni Ganguly received the Best Dialogue Award for the film "Tarikh". Ganguly has also directed the film starring Saswata Chatterjee, Raima Sen and Ritwick Chakraborty.

Ganguly was happy beyond words. For her, it is very ironical that she "speaks very less and she got an award for dialogue writing".

"It is a great honour to be awarded for dialogue in a film at the national level. I am very proud of the team. We will be happy to make more films and keep up our standard," Ganguly told IANS over phone.