Eeb Allay Ooo and Honeyland emerge top winners at MAMI 2019

Stills from Honeyland Ljubomir Stefanov

As the Jio MAMI 21st Mumbai Film Festival with Star comes to an end on Thursday evening, Eeb Allay Ooo!, a film about a young migrant who bags the ‘government job’ of mimicking langurs in Delhi, and Honeyland, the story of a woman who follows the ancient beekeeping tradition to cultivate honey in the mountains of Macedonia, emerge as the top winners.

Set in Delhi, Prateek Vats’ debut feature Eeb Allay Ooo! bagged the Golden Gateway award in the ‘India Gold section’ for his comical yet disturbing take on social conditions. In the same section, Gitanjali Rao’s debut animation feature, Bombay Rose, received Silver Gateway and writer-director Saurav Rai got the Grand Jury Prize for Screenwriting for Nimtoh (Invitation), a poignant comment on social structure. Shardul Bhardwaj got the Special Jury Mention Best Actor (Male) for Eeb Allay Ooo! while Mohini Sharma got Special Jury Mention Best Actor (Female) for her portrayal of a widow enjoying her freedom and discovering small joys of life in Aise Hi.

Stills from Eeb Allay Ooo!

The festival was a week-long celebration of some of the best works and talent in the world of cinema. It showcased some of the finest recent features and documentaries. In the International Competition section, Ljubomir Stefanov and Tamara Kotevska’s Honeyland won the Golden Gateway trophy. Rodd Rathjen’s Buoyancy won the Silver Gateway award. The Grand Jury Prize in this section went to Suhaib Gasmelbari’s Talking About Trees, which is a documentary about a group of people trying to revive cinema culture in Sudan. In this section, Carlo Sironi’s Sole and Amjad Abu Alala’s You Will Die at Twenty were selected for Special Jury Mention.