Anil Zankar, a Guest Faculty member in the Humanities and Social Sciences Department of IISER Pune, has been conferred with the Sudhir Nandgaonkar Memorial Award 2025 at the Third Eye Asian Film Festival held in Mumbai, in recognition of Shri Zankar's work in writing on cinema.
The award was presented to Shri Zankar by M. Kiran V. Shantaram, Chairperson of the Asian Film Foundation, during the closing ceremony of the 21st edition of the Third Eye Asian Film Festival held on January 16, 2025, in Mumbai. The award has been instituted in memory of noted writer and film critic Late Shri Sudhir Nandgaonkar.
An alumnus of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) in Pune, Anil Zankar is a filmmaker, writer, teacher and historian of cinema with over 45 years of experience in filmmaking, teaching, and scriptwriting. Previously, he has received two national awards for writing on cinema (1982, 1997).
Shri Zankar has authored two independent books and has contributed chapters to the books published by Encyclopaedia Britannica, HarperCollins, Routledge and Springer Press. He has directed 22 short films so far on personalities, institutions, social issues, corporate themes, and historical subjects. The latest in the series has been the film Vaidnyanik Saraswat (The Scientist-Author) - on Prof. Jayant V. Narlikar for Sahitya Akademi, 2020. At present, he is working on a feature-length documentary based on the life and work of Dr M. S. Swaminathan -“Harvesting of Hope”.
Congratulations to Shri Anil Zankar on this important recognition for his work!
