NEW DELHI: The best film award at the seventh Cinema City International Film Festival in Serbia has gone to an Indian short, Stray Dogs.

The 19-minute short film by Atanu Mukherjee won the IBIS statuette for the best film.

The film won in the “Up to 10,000 Bucks” competition programme, meant for low-budget films that screened 32 films of all genres this year.

The Cinema City International Film Festival was held in Novi Sad in Serbia from 21-28 June 2014.

“Stray Dogs uses a minimalistic and well-aimed dramatic structure to speak of system-imposed relation between the privileged and the oppressed, the mercurial nature of such relations, and discovery of a man outside the dynamics of hierarchy,” the Jury stated.

Set in Pune, Stray Dogs tells the story of Tony, an employee in the Flex Manufacturing industry whose freedom is always dominated by hierarchy.  Being suppressed by his boss, he can’t keep his commitments and priorities in his personal life. Gradually he starts performing the role of a manipulator and wants to see the effect of the same. Finally he confronts the reality of this vicious circle, where everybody is trapped within, including a stray dog.

The film is also scheduled for a screening at the International Documentary & Short Film Festival of Kerala in July.