Zinda Bhaag wins four awards in Canada

The Mosaic MISAFF festival held at the Mississauga City Centre, Toronto on Friday was attended by film industry leaders, professionals, local members of parliament as well as senators. The Mosaic festival is the largest South Asian festival visited by more than 70,000 people from all over Canada each year.

In this year’s prestigious award ceremony, the Pakistani film Zinda Bhaag, which is set to release on September 6, was truly victorious as it won four awards in three categories — Best Film Award, Best Actor Award and Best Music Award.

According to the press release, the MISAFF Jury headed by Kirk Cooper said, while announcing the winner for Best Film Award, “For the film that entertained and saddened us, for its music, art direction and overall innovation in storytelling, the best film award goes to Zinda Bhaag.”

The movie continued to be praised throughout the event as the jury presented awards to the music composer Sahil Ali Bagga for best music and actors Amna Ilyas and Naghma Begum for best actors.

The movie defeated many other international top nominations, including Mira Nair’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist.

About the success of Zinda Bhaag, Meenu and Farjad, co-directors of the movie, expressed proudly, “We congratulate the entire Zinda Bhaag team for these awards.”

Zinda Bhaag was the first choice amongst hundreds of entries, to be showcased as the opening night film of the esteemed festival.

The show was sold out in record time and played to a jam-packed house at the grand Empire Cinema in Mississauga, Toronto.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 20th, 2013.