Mani Ratnam to be honoured at Venice film fest

Acclaimed Indian director Mani Ratnam will be honoured with Jaeger-LeCoultre Glory to the Filmmaker Award at the Venice Film Festival to be held in September.

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Announcing this at Cannes, just before the launch of Mani Ratnam's film "Raavan", Venice Film Festival director Marco Muller said: "Mani Ratnam is one of the greatest innovators in contemporary Indian cinema. He helped introduce the auteur concept to contemporary Bollywood. We are very proud to honour the work of the great Indian director Mani Ratnam."

The festival premiere of "Raavan" was attended by the director, Aishwarya Rai, Abhishek Bachchan, Vikram and A.R. Rahman.

Both the Hindi and Tamil versions will be screened at Venice Film Festival.

"Mani Ratnam used to make movies only in his native tongue Tamil, but has been one of the handful of filmmakers to successfully reach out to the all-India market," Muller said.

In recent years the award has been given to filmmakers Takeshi Kitano, Abbas Kiarostami, Agnes Warda and Sylvester Stallone.

"Raavan" tells the story of a bandit leader who kidnaps the wife of a policeman who killed his sister. The film stars Abhishek Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai and Vikram. The music has been composed by A.R. Rahman.

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