S Durga director lauds Sujoy Ghosh's move of resigning from IFFI jury

Two days after Sanal Kumar Sasidharan's S Durga and Ravi Jadhav's Nude were dropped from the line-up of the 48th International Film Festival of India (IFFI) by the Information and Broadcasting ministry, Sujoy Ghosh stepped down as the chief of the 13-member jury of the Indian Panorama section at the festival.

Sujoy Ghosh

Though Sasidharan is horrified at the state of events, he is grateful that Ghosh took up for his Malayalam film. "I'm glad Sujoy took a stand for us. This is what we expect from filmmakers. It's brave of him considering most festival directors shirk away from taking responsibility."

Still from S... Durga

Reeling under the shock of his film being unceremoniously dropped, the director said, "I'm told it's a government film festival but I don't see my movie as anti-government." Justifying their move, Vivek Agnihotri, chairman of IFFI preview committee, said, "They wanted a children's film to be at the centre of the festival. The jury's job is to select the films, out of which the Ministry chooses 20 of them. From what I checked, one of the films wasn't complete. The other film was not selected."

Sanal Kumar Sasidharan

When asked about Ghosh stepping down from his post, Agnihotri added, "That's his call. But a lot of the jury members are in favour of our decision."