'Sherni', 'Ludo', 'Soorarai Pottru' nominated for IFFM awards

Vidya Balan-starrer 'Sherni', Anurag Basu-directed 'Ludo' and Suriya-starrer 'Soorarai Pottr' are among the movies that will vie for the top film awards at the Indian Film Festival of Melbourne (IFFM) Awards 2021.

The nominations for the festival's annual awards ceremony were unveiled on Thursday.

In the best film category, the three films are joined by Malayalam feature 'Kayattam (A'hr)', 'Lootcase' and Bengali feature 'Tasher Ghawr'.

Filmmaker Ajitpal Singh's 'Fire in the Mountains', which recently had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival 2021, is nominated in the best indie film category.

The other nominees are 'God on the Balcony' (Assamese), 'Laila aur Satt Geet' (Gojri, Hindi), 'Nasir' (Tamil), 'Pinki Elli?' (Kannada), 'Seththumaan' (Tamil), 'Sthalpuran' (Marathi) and 'The Great Indian Kitchen' (Malayalam).

Basu and Singh are also nominated in the best director race along with Sudha Kongara of 'Soorarai Pottru', Akshay Indikar of 'Sthalpuran', 'Amit Masurkar' of 'Sherni', Arun Karthick of 'Nasir', Biswajeet Bora of 'God on the Balcony', Jeo Baby of 'The Great Indian Kitchen', Pithvi Konnanur for 'Pinki Elli?' and Sanal Kumar Sasidharan of 'Kayattam (A'hr)'.

'Ludo' stars Rajkummar Rao and Pankaj Tripathi will compete for the best actor honour alongside Suriya, Benjamin Daimary, Harish Khanna, Jitin Puthanchery, Koumarane Valavane and Neel Deshmukh.

Balan features in the best actress category and will compete against Nimisha Sajayan, Rasika Dugal, Rima Kallingal, Swastika Mukjherjee and Vinamrata Rai.

'W.O.M.B (Women Of My Billion)', which will open the festival on August 12, is nominated in the best documentary category.

This year, the festival is also launching three additional categories in keeping with the growing trend of web series.

'The Family Man' season two, 'Mirzapur' season two and 'Bandish Bandits' will compete for the best series honour along with Netflix's 'Mismatched' and 'Churails' from Zee5.

The Tripathi and his 'Mirzapur' co-stars Ali Fazal and Divyenndu will battle it out with fellow Amazon comrades - Manoj Bajpayee, Saif Ali Khan and Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub - in the best performance (Male) category.

Samantha Akkineni is nominated in the best performance (Female) category alongside Shweta Tripathi Sharma, Shahana Goswami, Neena Gupta and Prajakta Koli.

The jury comprises Jill Bilcock, Vince Colosimo and a Geoffrey Wright.