Shabana Azmi to head for Florence for a retrospective

Actress Shabana Azmi is set to head for the prestigious River To River film festival in Florence, starting Nov 22, where best of her works, including Shyam Benegal's "Ankur", Mahesh Bhatt's "Arth", Vinay Shukla's "Godmother" and Deepa Mehta's "Fire", will be screened.

That isn't all. Cristina Scaletti, Tuscany's regional councillor of culture, will give Shabana the Pegasus of the Region Tuscany Award on the opening day.

Said Shabana: "I'm honoured and humbled and grateful to the writers and directors who cast me in challenging roles. The Pegasus honour is big because when a state recognises you, it's very heartening."

Encomiums and Shabana are bum chums. In her career of 41 years she has collected awards - both National and popular - by the dozen and has made her prsence felt at various film festivals.

Shabana has had many retrospective, such as the one at the New York Film Festival where she was the first actor ever to be thus honoured as till then they did retros only of directors.

Retrospective of her films were also held at Cinematheque in Paris, at the British Film Institute London, Avignon, and Winnipeg, Toronto etc. in Canada.

Last year the River To River festival held a retrospective of Amitabh Bachchan's films.