Documentary ‘Murmurs of the Jungle’ gets top prize, Sohil Vaidya now plans first feature film
Sohil Vaidya (35) received the Best Documentary Award at the 70th National Film Awards that were announced in New Delhi recently.
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Sohil Vaidya receiving the National Film award from President Murmu. (Photo: Sohil Vaidya)A boy recites a story told to him by his grandmother about the origins of their remote indigenous village in the Western Ghats of Maharashtra. As the mysterious morning slowly unfolds, spirits wander in the forest, and dark secrets buried in time slowly emerge. The trees whisper tales of the Gods and the ancestors. They say that you don’t die. Your spirit assimilates into the jungle. And while civilization, its beliefs, and the cycle of life, death, and rebirth continue, the forest stands eternal. A bridge between the old and the new.
Ancestral stories that are passed vocally from one generation to another slowly become mythologies. But what connection does their present hold with the ancient past? For Sohil Vaidya (35), a keen interest in mythology and its transcendence in our modern lives compelled him to investigate this connection. Vaidya, who splits his time between Pune and Los Angeles received the Best Documentary Award at the 70th National Film Awards that were announced in New Delhi recently.
Sohil Vaidya(Director/Producer) and Sumant Shinde(Voice Over Artist), both won Rajat Kamal(Silver Lotus) Award for Murmurs of the Jungle(Total two wins). (Photo: Sohil Vaidya)
Celebrating the best of Indian cinema that was certified in the year 2022, Vaidya’s documentary in Marathi ‘Murmurs of the Jungle’ won the top prize (Rajat Kamal/Silver Lotus). President Droupadi Murmu gave away the awards. The filmmaker who now plans on his first feature film told The Indian Express that this documentary is not about a particular Adivasi tribe. “It is a universal story between humans and nature, adivasis and the jungle,” he added. Sumant Shinde also won the Rajat Kamal /Silver Lotus award for Voice Over Artist for the Murmurs of the Jungle.
Snippet from Marathi documentary Murmurs Of the Jungle. (Photo: sohilvaidya.com)
Premiered at the 52nd International Film Festival of India in the Indian Panorama, this documentary has received several awards. His other films have been officially selected for more than 100 film festivals worldwide like Rotterdam, Melbourne, Chicago, Raindance, Indian Panorama at IFFI, Palm Springs, New York Indian Film Festival and others.
Vaidya, who hails from Pune and is the son of noted cardiologist Dr Abhijit Vaidya, graduated from the University of Southern California (USC) Film School . “At USC, I was chosen to co-direct an episode for a Warner Brothers Studios funded project named Samir and financing my education was possible with the help of scholarships such as the James Bridges Directing Scholarship and Edward Thomas Troutner Cinematography Scholarship,” he said.
In Pune presently, Vaidya also told The Indian Express that he was keen on his first feature film named ‘Aadim’ (Primordial) a Neo-Noir Psychological Folk Thriller/Horror which was selected for NFDC Film Bazaars Co-Production Market.
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