Mumbai, October 27 Shabana Azmi is ready to go for the prestigious river To river film festival in Florence, beginning November 22, where best of her works, together with Shyam Benegal’s “Ankur”, Mahesh Bhatt’s “Arth”, Vinay Shukla’s “Godmother” and Deepa Mehta’s “Fire”, will be screened.
That isn’t all. Tuscany’s regional councillor of culture, will offer Shabana the Pegasus of the Region Tuscany Award on the opening day.
Said Shabana: “I’m honored and humbled and grateful to the writers and directors who forged me in difficult roles. The Pegasus honour is huge because once a state recognises you, it’s extremely heartening.”
Encomiums and Shabana are bum chums. In her whole career she has collected awards – both National and popular – by the dozen and has created her prsence felt at varied film festivals.
Shabana has had several retrospective, like the one at the New york film festival where she was the first actor ever to be so honored as till then they did retros only of directors.
Retrospective of her films were also held at Cinematheque in Paris, Avignon, at British Film Institute London, and Winnipeg, Toronto etc. in Canada.
Last year the river To river festival held a retrospective of Amitabh Bachchan’s films.
