Bollywood Hails Chaitanya Tamhane’s Best Screenplay Win For The Disciple At The Venice Film Festival

The Disciple, directed by Chaitanya Tamhane was bestowed with Best Screenplay award at the Venice International Film Festival’s closing ceremony on Saturday. For the unversed, this is the second award for The Disciple as it was earlier also honoured with the International Critics’ Prize awarded by FIPRESCI.

Chaitanya opened up about the win in a statement and said, “Writing The Disciple was by far the most challenging and painful endeavour I have ever undertaken. This honour means a lot to me and it will encourage me to keep pushing my own boundaries even further. I want to dedicate this award to all the musicians, researchers, authors, and historians who helped open the doors to the incredible world of Indian classical music for me.”

Producer Vivek Gomber added, “To win a Best Screenplay award amongst such stalwarts is just an incredible feat. I am really grateful to the jury and very proud of Chaitanya. It’s the hardest and the loneliest job, but the final script was also what convinced me to back the film.” It must be noted that The Disciple is the first Indian film to be selected in the competition category at Venice since Mira Nair's Monsoon Wedding in 2001.

A number of Bollywood personalities like Richa Chadha, Manoj Bajpayee, Ali Fazal, Anurag Kashyap among others congratulated colleague Chaitanya for his best screenplay win whilst hailing it as a landmark moment for Indian cinema.

Ayushmann Khurrana, took to his social media to congratulate the film-maker and wrote, “The Disciple has bagged the prestigious FIPRESCI award at the 2020 Venice Film Festival! It is also the first Indian film in 30 years to do so! Congratulations Chaitanya Tamhane! The entire nation is proud of you!” Check out some other reactions below: