Malayalam filmmaker Sajin Baabu, who has made critically acclaimed films like Ayaal Sassi and Biriyaani, said that he was not invited to the National Awards ceremony to be held on October 17, Tuesday, even though he was part of the jury. "This year I had the privilege to be part of the jury for the 69th National Film Awards South Panel-I (Tamil and Malayalam). Tomorrow is the 69th National Awards ceremony but I have not yet received any official intimation or invitation about it," he wrote in a thread of tweets on X (formerly Twitter).
He had waited for an invitation for a while before trying to contact the National Film Awards cell, he said. But there was no response to his calls or emails. Neither was he given a reason for his exclusion from the ceremony, he said.
"All of us jury members have dedicated considerable time and energy for about 20 days deliberating on the movies. When everyone else has received their invitation, I don’t understand the reason behind excluding me," Sajin tweeted and added that he could only assume that a Facebook post he had previously made had resulted in this exclusion.
After the National Awards were announced in August, Sajin had posted on Facebook about the procedural lapse in the Kerala State Film Development Corporation (KSFDC)’s submission of one of the films they had produced, as part of the government project to fund women filmmakers. A short time after he made the post, he got a call from an official of the KSFDC, to whom he clarified that he did not intend to blame anyone, Sajin said. He had also taken down the post.
"I only wanted to point out the mistake made in following the basic rules and regulations when submitting a movie for the National Film Awards, which especially should not happen from an organization like KSFDC. The person (who called from KSFDC) then told me he would talk to the NFDC (National Film Development Corporation) about it," Sajin wrote.
Immediately after the call, he received an email from the NFA cell which warned him that "any disclosure of jury deliberations may lead to a ban on the jury member in the future." He had made it clear in his response that no such disclosure was made and he considered it his duty as a filmmaker to bring to light practices that may harm potential possibilities of fellow filmmakers, Sajin added.
Sajin, who made his feature film debut with Unto The Dusk in 2014, directed the multiple-award winning Biriyaani in 2020, which tells the story of a Muslim woman (played by Kani Kusruti) who goes through varied struggles touching upon the questions of religion and extremism.