The first-ever film from Nagaland to feature at the Toronto International Film Festival or TIFF has garnered its prestigious competitive award, qualifying for the International Feature Film category for the next Academy Awards.
The announcement that Angh, from director Theja Rio, had won the Platform prize at TIFF came on Sunday morning. He said, “It is a very special moment for me and for everyone associated with the film. I am aware that it is rare for a debut film to receive this kind of recognition, and all I can say is that we made Angh with a lot of love — for the place I come from, for my people and for our culture.”
“To see Angh connect with audiences beyond our own community has been deeply moving. I feel humbled and deeply grateful. I want to thank the jury for recognising our work and for giving us the opportunity to represent our country and our culture on two of the world’s most prestigious stages — TIFF’s Platform Competition and, soon, the Academy Awards as well,” he added.
While national bodies nominate films for the International Feature Film section of the Oscars, this is the first year that the Academy is automatically accepting competition winners from six global festivals including TIFF.
{{/usCountry}}While national bodies nominate films for the International Feature Film section of the Oscars, this is the first year that the Academy is automatically accepting competition winners from six global festivals including TIFF.
{{/usCountry}}In choosing Angh, the Platform jury commended the film for “its refreshing perspective, strength of filmmaking, and deeply resonant portrait of a world. We praise the filmmaker’s vision, audacity and courage.”
Rio, 31, was born in Kohima and studied in Delhi, Angh is his debut feature though he expanded on a theme he earlier explored in a short film of the same name.
The film is almost entirely in Konyak, a language spoken by less than a quarter million people worldwide.
Set in the 1960s, it explores the theme of the chief of a village attempting to maintain his traditional culture even as the incursion of a missionary threatens its existence.
“My collaboration with Theja has been one of the longest and most meaningful collaborations of my career. We have been carrying ANGH with us for many years from the short film to the feature and through all of it, we held on to the belief that this was a story we had to tell, and that we had to tell it on our own terms,” Angh’s producer Nancy Nisa Beso said.