'Dollu' Director Sagar Puranik Reacts to National Film Awards Controversy

Sagar Puranik opens up about the controversy surrounding his National award-winning film 'Dollu.'

68th National Film Awards: Dollu director Sagar Puranik responds to Resul Pookutty and sync sound controversy

Photo courtesy: Twitter

At the 68th National Film Awards, director Sagar Puranik’s debut feature film Dollu won the award for Best Kannada Film. Interestingly, Sagar received a national award for the best non-feature film back in 2019 which also was his debut in that category.

Speaking to The Quint, Sagar opens up about what the national award means to him as a debutant. He also reacts to the controversy around the film's awards and more.

Dollu poster

Photo courtesy: Twitter

The film also won an award for Best Audiography under the Location Sound Recordist category (for sync sound films only).

However, Oscar Award-winning sound designer Resul Pookutty wrote on Twitter “The film that won the #SyncSoundRecording #NationalAwards is not even a sync sound film, it’s a dubbed film, confirms the Sound Designer of the film @nithin_lukose.”

Sagar also reacted to Resul Pookutty’s tweet.

I will never claim that Dollu is a sync sound film. I’m assuming that the jury has acknowledged the complexity of recreating the sounds for Dollu.

Sagar Puranik, Filmmaker

Dollu is based on the popular folk art form of Karnataka, Dollu Kunitha. Check out the video to catch the full interview.