MUMBAI: The Bangladeshi film Guerrilla, which recreates the heroic deeds of the valiant freedom fighters of the 1971 liberation war, won the best Asian film award in the ‘Asian Select‘ section at the 17th Kolkata Film Festival (KFF).

In all, 12 films competed in the Asian Select section for the coveted award. This was for the first time that a separate competitive section was added to KFF that was so far the oldest non-competitive film festival in the country.

Besides, London-based filmmaker Hammad Khan‘s Slackistan, Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylon‘s Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, Hungarian director Bela Tarr‘s The Turin Horse and Certified Copy made by Italian director Abbas Kiarostami too proved to be a hit with the audience.

But the biggest attraction of the festival was Ketan Mehta‘s film Rang Rasiya and the Bangladeshi film Meherjaan. While Rang Rasiya is based on the life of 19th century painter Raja Ravi Varma, Meherjaan, that stars Victor Banerjee and Jaya Bachchan along with a number of actors from Bangladesh and Pakistan, is about a Bangladeshi woman‘s love affair with a Pakistani soldier during the 1971 Liberation War.

The festival also saw the West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee declare her government‘s plans to felicitate renowned directors and actors of Hollywood and Bollywood from 2012. "From next year we will felicitate and award the famous directors, actors and even good technicians of Hollywood, Bollywood and Tollywood," she said while addressing the closing ceremony of the 17th KFF.