Fandry_posterFilmmaker Nagraj Manjule’s debutante project Fandry was awarded the FIPRESCI-India Film Critics Award for Best Indian Film 2013.

Members of FIPRESCI-India voted for the best Indian film after a shortlist was compiled with one film from each region following a procedure similar to the European Grand Prix instituted by FIPRESCI, which is the International Federation of Film Critics.

Fandry, the Marathi film, was chosen out of the list of other nominees including Partav: The Influence (Kashmiri), Shutter (Malayalam), Roopkatha Noy (Bengali), Ko-Yad (Assamese), Munsif (Kannada).

The award cosists of a cash prize, a plaque and a certificate to the makers of the film to be given at the upcoming Bangalore International Film Festival.

Fandry is inspired from Nagraj Manjule’s own experiences of life and this is what makes the whole watch very innocent, piercing the subject deep into our heart. The story revolves around Jabya, an adolescent boy, who is born in a Kaikadi (untouchables Dalit) caste. He has fallen in love with a girl, his classmate in school, called Shalu. Shalu is a girl from higher caste however. Therefore Jabya is deep rooted in the inferiority complex, almost genetic, about his looks, his personality, his caste, his stunning poverty and above all his traditional hereditary source of livelihood – trapping the pigs for their daily diet even when the pigs eat the human excrement.