Sanjeewa wins Best Director

17 July 2011 06:32 am

By Susitha R. Fernando

Young Sri Lankan filmmaker Sanjeewa Pushpakumara won the Best Director award at the New Territories competition section of the Saint Petersburg International Film Festival held from July 10 to 15.

Sanjeewa won this prestigious award for his maiden feature ‘Igilena Maaluwo’ (Flying Fish), a film on three parallel stories set amidst war in an Eastern village.
Sanjeewa won the award in the “New Territories” program of the St. Petersburg International Film Festival-“Kinoforum” competing with 10 films that represented the cinema of China, Iran, Russia, USA, Poland, Spain and Denmark.

While Sanjeewa won the Best Director in the competition program ‘New Territories’, the Best Film Award was given to film ‘Black Blood’ of Chinese director Miaoyan Zhang.

The film playing Chaminda Sampath Jayaweera, Rathnayaka Marasinghe, Siththi Mariyam, Sanjeewa Dissanayake, Sumathy Sivamohan and Kaushalya Fernando in its stellar cast, earlier represented Sri Lanka at a number of well-known film festivals including 47th Chicago International Film Festival, 37th Seattle International Film Festival (IFF) and at Pesaro IFF in Italy.  (Daily Mirror online)