Anjali Patil's Tamil film Selvi wins two awards at Busan International Film Festival

Selvi, a Tamil film about migrant home-care nurses, has won two prizes at the 31st Busan International Film Festival: the Hylife Vision Award and the Taipei Film Commission Award. It premiered in the festival's Vision section, which features films from Asia.

Anjali Patil plays the title role and also produced the film. It is the first feature directed by Sailesh Rathnakumar.

Patil gave the credit to her director. She said Rathnakumar had worked the hardest to make the story real. She added that people from the Taipei Film Commission told the team that a debut made with this much finesse and style came as no surprise to them. She said the team accepted the honour on behalf of everyone who had loved the film, from Korean audiences to its young film lovers.

The story follows a nurse who looks after patients in wealthy homes and gets almost no time for herself. Rathnakumar said the idea came from his cinematographer, Bargav Sridhar. Sridhar came to know the home-care world when his mother had a lung illness during COVID-19. Many of these nurses come from small towns such as Nagercoil and Tirunelveli, the director said, and nobody sees the emotional weight they carry. He described Selvi as a film that "bridges the gap between arthouse and commercial" cinema.

Learning the language took real work. Patil, who is from Maharashtra, said she has been studying Tamil for more than a year. The team dubbed the whole film and then dubbed it again so she would sound local, because a role this realistic needed her own voice.

Anand Krishnamoorthi handled the sound design. The project was backed by the Red Sea Fund and the Hong Kong Asia Film Financing Forum.