Swara Bhaskar wins best actress title in China

Indian film talent Swara Bhaskar has won the Best Actress award at a film festival in the capital city of Fujian province for playing a mother to a teenager in Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari's directorial "Nil Battey Sannata" (The New Classmate).

The "Raanjhanaa" actress won the honour at the second Silk Road International Film Festival, which concluded on Saturday, according to state-owned China Radio International.

"Swara is an amazing actress. She had to put on eight kg for the role. She went to Agra and studied the local culture. She had to take up two months of training. She's not a mother and she plays one in the film. She had to calm down. She even went for meditation and yoga," Tiwari had told IANS earlier.

At the fest, Hong Kong superstar Andy Lau was awarded the Best Actor prize for his performance in "Saving Mr. Wu".

The award of Features Films of 2015 went to three movies, including "Saving Mr Wu", Russian movie "Puppet Syndrome" and "Yellow Flowers on the Green Grass" from Vietnam.

Jackie Chan, the ambassador of the Silk Road Film festival, said that he hopes the Festival can draw attention worldwide and become the Chinese equivalent to the Oscars.

"I hope the Silk Road International Film Festival will make progress year by year and draw attention from worldwide. And more and more people from other nations would take part in the festival in the future. Oscar is a very important global award. I hope the Silk Road festival would learn from it and become the 'Chinese Oscar'".

The Best Animated Film award went to "The Monkey King: Hero is Back" and the Best Documentary Award was bagged by "In the Underground".

The Silk Road film fest has signed cooperative agreements with Busan International Film Festival, Moscow International Film Festival, Hawaii International Film Festival.