Young filmmaker Katyayan Shivpuri, from Maharashtra, won the first prize at the Swachh Bharat Short Film Festival for Murga.
Minister of Information and Broadcasting M Venkaiah Naidu awarded Shivpuri with a certificate and a cash prize of Rs1 million (Dh55,054).
The short film promoting the idea of a clean India use murga (chicken) as the metaphor, showing how citizens have made victims of themselves and of children by not keeping their surroundings clean.
The second prize was shared by filmmakers Sudanshu Sharma, KVK Kumar and Akshay Danavale for their films Nahna Doot, Chembuku Moodindi (The Dying Vessel) and Sarkarmi Rati Wadho! respectively. The third prize was awarded to six entries.
Congratulating the winners, Naidu said: “The Swachh Bharat Short Film Festival is aimed at generating awareness, and motivating participants and citizens towards the Swachh Bharat Mission through the most interactive medium of cinema.”
The short film festival was a competition inviting films that were three minutes or less.
Producer Vani Tripathi, filmmaker Gitanjali Rao and advertising personality Prahlad Kakar served as the jury who had to select 20 short films out of the 4,346 entries, before deciding on the winners.
The minister announced that well-known filmmakers such as Madhur Bhandarkar, Radhakrishna Jagarlamudi, Prasoon Pandey, Ramesh Sippy and Shoojit Sircar will support the Swachh Bharat initiative by producing films promoting the movement.
