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Famous director Shyam Benegal passed away at the age of 90. The director directed several award-winning films throughout his career, including Ankur, Bhumika, Manthan and Nishant. The filmmaker’s daughter, Pia Benegal, showed the news of his death to Hindustan Times on Monday afternoon.
“Yes, he died. The loss is too great,” he said. He had been suffering from chronic kidney disease for a few years. The illness was serious and we knew it was going to happen. He passed away today at 6:38 pm at Wockhardt Hospital in central Mumbai. “
The veteran director celebrated his 90th birthday a few days ago in Mumbai with his circle of family and close friends from the industry. Actress Shabana Azmi, who debuted in the film industry with Ankur du Benegal, had shared a photo from the celebrations on her X account. It also starred actor Naseeruddin Shah on the same stage.
The filmmaker was known for his rich framework of paintings that broke with the norms of classical cinema. His films were marked by a certain degree of realism and social observation and contributed to the Indian parallel cinema movement in the 1970s and 1980s. He won several National Film Awards, including Bhumika: The Role (1977), Junoon (1978), Arohan (1982), Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose: The Forgotten Hero (2004), Manthan (1976) and Well Done Abba (2010). .
During a recent interaction with PTI on his birthday, he said, “We all get older. I don’t do anything smart (on my birthday). It would possibly be a special day, but I don’t celebrate it specifically. I cut a cake in the workplace with my team. I am executing two or three projects; they are all different. It’s hard to say which one I’ll do. They’re all meant for the big screen.
The 2023 biographical drama Mujib: The Making of a Nation is his latest feature film as a director.
Earlier this year, one of the filmmaker’s most noted work, Manthan, was screened at the Cannes Film Festival. A restored version of the 1976 release, starring Naseeruddin Shah and the late actor Smita Patil, inspired by the groundbreaking milk cooperative movement by Dr Verghese Kurien that transformed India into one of the largest milk producers in the world, was showcased under the Cannes Classics segment.
The film won two National Film Awards in 1977: for best feature film in Hindi and for best screenplay for Tendulkar. It was also India’s official entry to the 1976 Academy Awards in the best foreign language film category.
The director skipped the release due to health reasons and recalled how the farmers of Gujarat made the film a hit by seeing it en masse in theatres.