Bhubaneswar: Babushaan-starrer Odia movie DAMaN directed by Vishal Mourya and Debi Prasad Lenka won the National Film Award in the Best Odia feature film category.
The movie that tracks the journey of Dr Siddharth Mohanty to eradicate malaria in the tribal districts of Malkangiri and Koraput was released in 2022. DAMaN is an acronym for Durgama Anchalare Malaria Nirakarana (malaria control in inaccessible areas), a government programme which has benefited around 8,000 villages in Odisha.
Directed by the young duo of Vishal Mourya and Debi Prasad Lenka and produced by Deependra Samal, DAMaN also stars Dipanwit Das Mohapatra and members of local tribal communities of Malkangiri and Koraput districts who have acted in a film for the first time.
The film was released November 4, 2022 in theatres in Odisha and Bangalore, Chennai, Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Surat, Raipur, Pune and Hyderabad.
Following the appreciation the film garnered both in and outside Odisha, the filmmakers decided to release the movie in Hindi. Hindi film actor Ajay Devgn launched the Hindi dubbed trailer of the film, and the movie was released February 3, 2023.
The Odisha government had declared ‘DAMaN’ tax-free in the state.
Regional cinema dominated the National Film Awards with best feature film going to Malayalam movie ‘Aattam: The Play’ and Rishabh Shetty bagging best actor for the Kannada hit ‘Kantara’. The best actress prize was shared by Nithya Menen, for the Tamil film ‘Thiruchitrambalam’, and Manasi Parekh for the Gujarati movie ‘Kutch Express’.
The lone Bollywood presence in the top categories for the 70th edition of the National Awards was ‘Uunchai’ with Sooraj R Barjatya named best director.
The adventure film, centred on four aging friends readying to scale Mt Everest, also won Neena Gupta a best supporting actress prize.
A big winner in the awards for 2022 was the Haryanvi film ‘Fouja’, which got Pavan Malhotra a Best Supporting Actor and won two other awards — Best Debut Film of a Director for Pramod Kumar and Best Lyrics to Naushad Sadar Khan.
PNN