[ Amar Sangno ]
ITANAGAR, 24 Apr: Millo Sunka has become the first Arunachalee actor to win the best actress award at the Prisma Rome International Film Award-2023 for her acting in a short film titled Nocturnal Burger.
The announcement of the award had been made on 17 April.
Nocturnal Burger is a fictional drama by Reema Maya about child abuse and the trauma that children face.
Sunka played the role of Simi, a stranger who brings a 13-year-old girl and a man in his 30s to a police station in Mumbai in the middle of the night.
“I played the role of Simi. Simi brings in the child and the older man to the station because she has seen the older man forcing himself on the child in a moving auto. The film is about the night when the police, Simi and the child’s parents are trying to figure out what exactly happened,” Sunka said.
“Honestly, I have no idea as to how many festivals the creators have sent the film to. I had not even heard about these film festivals, since our film is a short film and not many film festivals are dedicated to short films,” she said.
“When I was nominated for the Tiete Film Festival, I was very happy and excited since it was my first ever nomination, and then the announcement of the Rome Prisma Film Awards happened,” she added.
“All of this has not sunk in yet, but I know it is a huge, huge honour and I don’t know when I will ever get a chance to do bigger, better things. For now, I am very happy and it makes me feel like every decision I have taken in my life has bought me here,” she said.
“I am grateful to my director Reema Maya, who gave me this opportunity, and for some strange reason thought me fit for the role of Simi,” she added.
Nocturnal Burger had its world premiere at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival-2023. It is the largest independent film festival of the United States, and it is also an official selection of the Aspen Film Festival-2023 (which is an Oscar-qualifying film festival).
Sunka is the daughter of retired Indian Forest Service officer Millo Tago and Millo Yalyo, from Tajang village in Lower Subansiri district. Sunka and her sibling spent their childhood in rural Karnataka, and later in Bangalore, where her father was posted.
Her journey of onscreen acting started with a secondary role in the film Axone (2020). Since then, she has done two short films (Stranded and Nocturnal Burger), a music video, and some ad campaigns (Puma and Facebook Meta).
Director Reema Maya in her directorial note outlined Nocturnal Burger as a coming-of-age film “in the darkest sense.”
“We all remember our teenage moments of wanting to grow up too fast and the moment we understood for the first time what growing up actually feels like. It is in the transition between these two moments that the story of Nocturnal Burger takes place on a rainy night in Mumbai,” she said.
She further disclosed that the film was inspired by a true incident that had occurred a few years ago.
“It is an exploration of abuse and trauma; fantasy and escapism. It talks about the omnipresence of sexual abuse even in our public spaces, and the need for vigilance and intervention by the community,” she said.
“We worked with a mix of non-actors and regional actors from various parts of the country and shot in real locations. On set, we could feel the personal emotional investment of the team, because the incidents we were addressing in the film were something most of us encountered growing up,” she added in the note.
