There has been great anticipation for the Natesh Hegde directed Pedro, which has been backed by Rishab Shetty, ever since the film made its international debut at the Busan film festival. Now, the team has won big at another international film festival, Pingyao, where Natesh has won the prize for Best Director, which has been named after filmmaker Roberto Rosselini.
Natesh took to his social media page to share the news. He wrote, “Great news! It’s an honour to announce that I won best director award at 平遥国际电影展 Pingyao international film festival given in the name of great Roberto Rossellini. Thank you eminent jury panel Bi Gan(kaili blues), Li Dongmei(Mama), Liu Xiaodong, Ning Ying, Anaïs Liu. Marco Müller and Deepti DCunha I can’t thank enough for your support.
I thank my producer Rishab Shetty for standing with me. Raj B Shetty for his unconditional love. Thank you M S Prakash Babu for believing in me from the beginning.
Vikas Urs Shreyank Nanjappa and my whole team you deserve this accolade. I dedicate this award to my father and actor Gopal Hegde and my mother Sujata for everything.”
In an earlier interview with Bangalore Times, Natesh had shared, “Raj B Shetty is a friend. When we were talking about films in general, he was the one who prodded me if I had no plans of making a feature. It was then that this story shaped up. This is set in my hometown and incidentally my father plays Pedro in the film. It was when the story was ready that Raj introduced me to Rishab and we embarked on this journey. It is happy to see how well this journey has shaped up now.”
