60th National Film Awards

As the Oscar fever goes down, we bring you closer to home with the announcement of the 60th Indian National Film Awards. The National Film Award is an honour which every Indian film and film-maker covets. With the announcement of the list of award winners, the movies that made a mark in 2012 are under the media spotlight.

The movie that won the national award for Best Adapted Screenplay was Oh My God! This film by Umesh Shukla has been adapted from a Gujarati play called Kanji Virudh Kanji. Before producing Oh My God! Paresh Rawal had already translated the Gujarati play in Hindi called Kishen VS Kanhaiya. With the play doing great in both the languages, it was later adapted on celluloid. The movie went on to become a box-office success with critics like Taran Adarsh calling it a ‘thought – provoking adaptation’.

Unlike Hollywood, Indian cinema hasn’t seen many films adapted from plays and musicals. Bheja Fry, All the Best and now OMG are a select few to have been adapted from the stage to the big screen. Witnessing the box office success of these films, not to mention international success of movies adapted from plays like Les Miserables, Mamma Mia and the likes, we can hope for more Indian filmmakers opting to adapt plays on to the big screen.

Coming back to the winners of the national film awards, Tigmanshu Dhulia’s Paan Singh Tomar won in the category of Best Feature Film. The movie is based on the real life story of an athlete turned dacoit successfully adapted on to celluloid, with Irfan Khan playing lead.

Another film adapted from a real life incident that got awarded by the national film award is Chittagong by Bedabrata Pain. Pain got the national award for the Best Debut Film of a Director. The movie is based on the Chittagong Uprising. After No One Killed Jessica and Paan Singh Tomar, Chittagong is the recent film to join the bandwagon of movies being adapted from real life incidents.

Recognition in the form of the National Film Awards coupled with the significant commercial success to these movies is likely to inspire more and more filmmakers to look at plays and real life events, for their next film.