Mani Ratnam - Legacy

Legacy

See also: List of awards and nominations received by Mani Ratnam

Ratnam is highly credited for having revolutionized the Tamil film industry and altering the profile of Indian cinema. He has made films with a variety of genres and a majority of his films are characterized by a string of Socio-political themes. It was mainly because of this most of his films have garnered both critical acclaim and commercial success.

With his idea of combining art and commercial elements, Ratnam was referred for bringing new dimension to the South Asian film industry. Many of his films have taken inspirations from real-life incidents such as Nayagan, Bombay, Iruvar and films like Thalapathi and Raavan were based on Indian epics. He is lauded for his casting in each of his films—he said in an interview, "I am not a director who performs and shows. I discuss the role, the scene with my actors and let them bring life to it".

Ratnam is also well recognized outside India with a retrospective of his films held at various film festivals around the world such as Toronto International Film Festival, Pusan International Film Festival, Tokyo Filmex and Birmingham International Film Festival. His films are being screened regularly at many film festivals such as Cannes Film Festival, Venice Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival, Montreal Film Festival and Palm Springs International Film Festival.

Ratnam's aspiration towards films grew up watching films of K. Balachander, Guru Dutt and Sivaji Ganesan. His is greatly influenced by the film-making styles of Akira Kurosawa, Martin Scorsese, Krzysztof Kieślowski and Ingmar Bergman.

The Government of India honoured Ratnam with Padma Shri in 2002. He has won several National Film Awards, Filmfare Awards, Filmfare Awards South and state awards. Apart from these awards, many of his films have been screened at various film festivals and have won numerous accolades. Geethanjali, directed by him won the Golden Lotus Award for Best Popular Film at the 37th National Film Awards. Other films like Mouna Ragam, Anjali, and Kannathil Muthamittal have won the Best Regional Film awards at the National Film Awards. Two of his films, Roja and Bombay have won the Nargis Dutt Award for Best Feature Film on National Integration. The former was also nominated for Best Film category at the Moscow International Film Festival. In 2010, Ratnam was honoured with Jaeger-Lecoultre Glory to the Filmmaker at the 67th Venice International Film Festival.