In a surprising decision, the jury of the 65th National Film Awards declared the 19-year old Riddhi Sen as the Best Actor. He was awarded the honours for his performance in the Bengali movie, Nagarkirtan. At his agem we are not exactly sure but he could be the youngest person to get the Best Actor award at National Film Awards. He has beaten the likes of Rajkummar Rao, Akshay Kumar, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Vijay Sethupathi to bag the honours. So who is Riddhi Sen and why do Bollywood movie fans find him familiar?
Riddhi Sen is Bengali actor Kaushik Sen and dancer Reshmi Sen's son, who made his debut in Bebali cinema in 2010. But Riddhi Sen was also a part of quite a few movies in Bollywood as well. He had an important role in Chauranga, that starred Sanjay Suri and Tannishtha Chatterjee. Before that, he had a small role in Vidya Balan's acclaimed thriller Kahaani. Riddhi was also seen in Parched and the Oscar nominee Lion as well.
But his most popular role was in last year's Bhoomi. Touted as Sanjay Dutt's comeback movie, Bhoomi was directed by Omung Kumar. Aditi Rao Hydari played Sanjay Dutt's daughter in the movie, which was about a father going on a revenge spree when his daughter gets brutally raped before her wedding day.
In Bhoomi, Riddhi Sen had an important role to play as the heroine's treacherous friend, who is the key member in getting her raped by her villains. His vile character gets his just desserts when Dutt's character finds out about his back-stabbing act through his own sister. However, since Riddhi's character was a minor, the hero waits for him to get to his 18th birthday, but not before letting him endure a long and rather silly torturous ordeal. And when his birthday arrives, Riddhi's character commits suicide.
Not only was the whole scene badly executed, even the whole movie was equally bad. Now that Riddhi Sen won a National Award, we do hope that Bollywood offers him a really good role that is worthy of his talent!
Congrats Riddhi Sen! Let's hope that this is a start to many more honours in your way. But what a start!
(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Apr 13, 2018 01:56 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).