What profession does Gus Van Sant and Shyam Benegal have in common?
Shyam Benegal Shyam Benegal (born 14 December 1934) is an Indian director and screenwriter. With his first four feature films "Ankur" (1973), "Nishant" (1975), "Manthan" (1976) and "" (1977) he created a new genre, which has now come to be called the "middle cinema" in India. He has expressed dislike of the term, preferring his work to be called New or Alternate cinema. Benegal was awarded the Padma Shri in 1976 and the Padma Bhushan in 1991. On 8 August 2007, Benegal was awarded the highest award in Indian cinema for lifetime achievement, the Dadasaheb Phalke Award for the year 2005. He has won the National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Hindi seven times.
Kondura Kondura / Anugraham is a 1978 Indian bilingual film simultaneously directed by Shyam Benegal in Hindi and Telugu. The film is based on the novel by Marathi writer, Chintamani T. Khanolkar [चिं. त्र्यं. खानोलकर] by the same name, the screen adaptation was made by Shyam Benegal and Girish Karnad. The majority of the cast was common to both films and included Ananth Nag, Vanisri, Amrish Puri, Shekhar Chatterjee (Hindi version only), Rao Gopal Rao (Telugu version only) and Satyadev Dubey. The film was one of the Indian entries at the 4th Hong Kong International Film Festival.