more-in That Sanal Kumar Sasidharan’s unprecedented achievement at the International Film Festival of Rotterdam, where his movie Sexy Durga won the prestigious Hivos Tiger Award, evoked mixed response in his home country will be an understatement. From bouquets and brickbats, teetering on outright threats, to complete silence bordering on indifference from his compatriots in Malayalam film industry, it had all the makings of a pot-boiler. Most baffling has been the rather muted response on the part of the who’s who of Malayalam film industry to Sanal’s feat. He is the first Indian film-maker to bag the biggest award at the festival meant for up-and-coming international film talent. The industry bigwigs were neither seen on television channels profuse in their praise for the young film-maker nor were there any congratulatory posts from them in social media. The twitterati in tinsel town was also relatively silent. But Sanal has reasons to be delighted as there was almost instant support and praise from a rather unexpected quarter. No less a film-maker than Anurag Kashyap went on to tweet how good a film Sexy Durga was. He described it as an edge-of-the-seat thriller. In fact, he had even predicted before the award was announced that the film would win it for sure. Then there was the other extreme when Hindu fringe groups jumped into the fray. As usual, they went on the overdrive straightaway finding movie title ‘Sexy Durga’ sacrilegious. They threatened the film-maker with dire consequences for portraying the goddess in bad light through the title. Not one to be easily cowed down, Sanal stood firm, saying that the movie was not even about Durga Devi and invited them for an informed debate after a special screening of the movie for them. Sanal found support in Kashyap in this as well when he tweeted that he was dying to see the faces of the very same people opposing the movie watching it since the movie was precisely about their brand of vandalism and moral policing.

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