Kani Kusruti was awarded Best Actress for her performance in Sajin Baabu’s Biriyani in the BRICS competition section at the 42nd Moscow International Film Festival.
This is the actor's second big international win for Biriyani, for which she was recently bestowed the International Award for Best Second Actress by the Imagine Film Festival, Madrid. Earlier this year, Kani was also nominated for the Best Actor award at the TriBeCa Film Festival in New York for her performance in Prashant Nair’s Tryst with Destiny.
In Biriyani, Kani plays the part of Khadeeja, a woman forced out of her home and into a journey of a profound transformation.
“I feel so inspired by cinema’s ability to transcend the boundaries of language and context,” Kani says about her big win in Moscow. “There’s little that expands my scope of life as this opportunity to live in the skin of another person and make them visible to the world,” she adds
The BRICS award was given to Kani Kusruti by the jury comprising Sergey Mokritsky (Russia), Janna Tolstikova (Brazil), Mahima Sikand (India) Zhang Jincgceng (China), and Mudemeli Madihva Aaron (South Africa).
It’s indeed a big year for Kani Kusruti with three releases lined up - Tryst with Destiny, Biriyani, and OK Computer, a sci-fi comedy series directed by Pooja Shetty and Neil Pagedar, and produced by Anand Gandhi.