Noted filmmaker Onir’s work- “I am”- may have won two national awards this year, for the best feature films and lyrics but he is not the riding the wave of fame. He is still the anirban dhar who left Bhutan with a heavy heart in his teens, landed in Calcutta and then flew off to berlinto learn film making. He later returned to India, and worked as an editor for music videos and films like “bhoot” and “rahul”.Onir never expected “I am” to bag the awards which came as recognition of his “dexterous weaving of four different stories across India, which negotiate the complexities of people undergoing the trauma of being dispossessed and thereby dis-empowered”. What made the special is they acknowledge th space for a small film among the biggies of  bollywood.

He had tough time convincing studios to finance his venture, and used social net working platforms to raise the money. He asked people to give rs 1000 or more and e part of film if they believed in the stories. Around 400 people from 46 cities across the world contributed nearly rs 10 million. Today, onir is “overwhelmed…. The award is for all those people who helped me with the film”.

“I am” comprises four short issue-based stories- “omar” talks about gay rights; “afia” sperm donation; “abhimanyu’ child abuse; and “megha” relates the story of kashmiri pandits.

This was onir’s fourth film. His debut “my brother-nikhil” dealt with AIDS and gay issues. That was followed by “bas ek pal” and “sorry bhai”.

Though his childhood in thimpu-where his father apresh dhar was a school principal and his film loving mother manjushree a history teacher- was idyllic, films were always in their background.

With an elder sister and young brother, onir was the ‘loser’ of the family. He had no interest n studies, and pull pranks on his brother. A rebel from the start, he shortened his name to onir while in Mumbai.

The family shifted to Calcutta in the late 1980s following political unrest in Bhutan. He joined jadavpur university to study comparative literature. The first few months were cultural shock. Coming from the quaint thimphu, where no one knew what “eve-teasing” was, he was disturbed by what he saw in streets.

While his mother may have fanned his interest in cinema, it was shyam Bengal who inspired him to take it up as a profession. At the age of 12, bengal’s “junoon” was the first strong impression.

Oril arrived in Mumbai in 1994 after studying film making in berlin. His sister Irene dhar malik was by then working as a film and television editor. For 10 years, he worked as art director, editor and music video producer.