Ladakh Film Festival finale: Of winners and no shows

All the action from the final day of Ladakh International Film Festival.

The third Ladakh International Film Festival concluded with some clear winners.

Kaafiron Ki Namaaz won four awards -- Best Feature Film, Best Debutant Director and Best Screenplay for Ram Ramesh Sharma and Best Actor.

The Best Actor award went to both the actors in the film -- the late Chandraas Tiwari and Alok Chatrurvedi.

The second film to get the maximum awards was an Iranian film called Wet Letters.

It won Best Director for Marjan Ashrafizadeh, Best Actress for Masoumeh Ghasemipur and Best Cinematographer for Mohammad Rasouli.

The Best Documentary Award went to Cuban film Roque Dalton: Lets Shoot the Night.

The Best Short Film went to Indian film Villari.

A Grand Prize was awarded to a Sri Lankan documentary called White Van Stories as well as the Venezuelan feature film The Return: Home Coming.

National award-winning filmmaker Shaji Karun was invited to give away the prizes.

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The final day of the festival also had fun activities like fish planting, where fish were released in the Sindhu river by Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra, Deepti Naval, Amole Gupte and Rajat Kapoor.

Films like Vikas Behl's Queen, Deepti Naval's Do Aane Ki Dhoop Aur Char Aane ki Baarish, Amol Gupte's Hawaa Hawaai, Transformers: Age Of Extinction and Rakeyesh Omprakash Mehra's wife P S Bharathi's Rubaru were also screened.

Rubaru, incidentally, is a documentary on the making of Mehra's Rang De Basanti. 

The third edition of the LIFF was quite disappointing, as the local people did not participate at all.

The screenings barely had any audience. In fact, many screening had to be cancelled because the theatres ran empty.

The locals apparently were not even aware of the festival.

Out of the 67 films that were to be screened, only 15 were finally shown. Some shows were also cancelled due to technical reasons.

The Druk Padma Karpo Education Society organised a cultural show on the last evening, followed by a lavish dinner.

Although it was interesting, the students, who lived in the hostel had to serve food till late at night even though they had a Maths test the next day.