Last week brought sensational news. Four South Asian films won big nominations at the  14th Asia Pacific Screen Awards (APSA, Australia), given to the best films from 70 Asian (and Pacific) nations. These are Payal Kapadia’s A Night of Knowing Nothing which won a Best Feature Film nomination. Koozhangal (Pebbles, Tamil) pulled off a double coup, earning Best Director nomination for PS Vinothraj, as well as Best Cinematographer for Vignesh Kumulai and Che Parthiban. Bangladeshi actress Azmeri Haque Badhon won a Best Actress nomination for Abdullah Mohammad Saad’s Rehana (Rehana Maryam Noor). And Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh’s Writing with Fire won a Best Documentary nomination. The APSA winners will be announced on November 11 at the Gold Coast, Australia.

Each of these wins is amazing, especially given the competition. But imagine just two Indian films, Payal Kapadia’s A Night of Knowing Nothing and PS Vinothraj’s Koozhangal, pulled off between them, four top nominations, including top honours for Best Feature Film and Best Director. The reason these wins are extraordinary, is that they are both debut features, and low budget indie films, up against the giants of contemporary world cinema. A Night of Knowing Nothing’s Best Feature Film nomination is for its producers Thomas Hakim and Julien Graff of Petit Chaos, France, and Ranabir Das, who is also its cinematographer and editor. The other nominees for Best Feature Film are, ahem ahem, Asghar Farhadi’s A Hero (Iran; Grand Prix at Cannes; Farhadi has also won two Oscars for A Separation and The Salesman), Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car (Japan; Best Screenplay at Cannes), Mohammad Rasoulof’s There is No Evil (Iran; Golden Bear winner, Berlin Film Festival), and Natalya Nazarova’s The Pencil (Russia). Moreover, it is very rare that a docu-fiction feature wins big in the Best Feature Film category, when there is already a separate category for Best Documentary.  Kapadia is an FTII graduate (they always say ‘pass-out,’ as if FTII is an anaesthetic), and her film uses letters between estranged lovers, and includes “found footage” shot by friends, to comment on the growing nationalism in the country, and student agitations nationwide addressing this.