‘Tsunami’ wins two more awards at Bayelsa IFF in Nigeria
Somaratne Dissanayake
Dr. Somaratne Dissanayake’s latest film direction ‘Tsunami’ won two more top awards at the Bayelsa International Film Festival 2021 in Yonago, Nigeria recently.
Director, screenwriter, and producer Somaratne Dissanayake won the award for the Best Director while the Best Actress Award was won by main actress Niranjani Shanmugaraja.
Based on incidents that occurred in Sri Lanka during the 2004 boxing day Indian Ocean’s tsunami disaster and the film is produced by Renuka Balasooriya for Cine Films Lanka.
The main roles of the film are played by Niranjani Shanmugaraja, Darshan Dharmaraj, Himali Sayurangi and Bimal Jayakody.
At the Byelsa International Film Festival ‘Tsunami’ was nominated for several awards including the Best Director, the Best Producer, the Best cinematography, the Best Actress, the Best Actor, the Best supporting actor and the Best child artiste. In addition Himali Sayurangi was nominated for Festival’s Viewers Choice Award as Best Actress.
Last year the film won the Best Director award at the Moonwhite Films International Film Festival at Mumbai in India. The film competed at the Feature Film International section along with large number of movies countries like India, France, Georgia, the United States Spain, Singapore, Denmark and Italy. The film was also nominated for the Best Film award.
So far ‘Tsunami’ has won nearly ten international film awards. It earlier won the Special Jury Mention at the Rainbow Film Festival in England. The has earlier competed at the Dhaka international film festival in Bangladesh.
Won his first international film award in 2000 for his debut “Saroja”, Dr. Dissanayake has won 37 international awards at various international film festivals around the world.
