IIFA 2024: Director Hemant M Rao slams organizers for being “disrespectful”

Directed by Hemant M Rao. | Photo credit: hemanthrao11/X

Director Hemanth M Rao has slammed the organizers of the International Indian Film Academy Awards (IIFA) as “highly disrespectful”. Calling his experience at the awards ceremony a “huge inconvenience”, the Kannada filmmaker said he was upset that he had waited until the early hours of the morning, only to realize that he had not received an award. Moreover, the director felt that the nominees were not given their due respect.

Held at Abu Dhabi’s Etihad Arena, the IIFA festival – the award ceremony to honor four southern film industry artists – took place on September 27, 2024. Hemant’s movie, Sapta came to Sagardacha, Kannada movies were the biggest winners in the category, taking home five awards.

Rakshit Shetty and Rukmini Vasant were named Best Actor and Gopalkrishna Deshpande won Best Actor in a Supporting Role. Dhananjay Ranjan won the best lyricist award and MC Biju won the best playback singer award.

Commenting that not winning the award was not his problem, Hemant posted X That he feels the organizers have failed to respect the nominees. “This is your reward. You can give it to anyone you want. That’s your choice. I haven’t won many awards and haven’t lost sleep over it. So these grapes are not sour. If all the other nominees are invited and a winner emerges, I won’t bother to be upset. Also, this year’s format was just for awarding. Nominees are also not mentioned,” he wrote.

The IIFA festival starts late in the evening and the best Kannada artistes are awarded at 1:00 am. The program ends around 3 pm. “I’ve been in this business for a decade and this wasn’t my first stint at an award show. This is always the case where the winners are streamed and hosted for the event. For context, I sat up until 3:00 a.m., only to realize there was no reward. Same thing happened to my music composter Charan Raj,” wrote Hemant.

Also read:‘Bhairavana Kon Pata’: Shivarajkumar’s first look from Hemant M Rao’s film

The filmmaker added, “Perhaps it took a while for you and your team to realize that your awards run on the talent you have on stage. It’s not the other way around.”

Meanwhile, on the work front, Hemanth is working with veteran director Sivarajkumar. title Bhairavna no leaves, The film is produced by Dr. Baishak J Gowda. The movie is considered to be a 14th century action drama.