Odisha-Born Sound Designer Wins Filmfare Award For ‘Uri’

Mumbai: Odisha-born Nihar Ranjan Samal has added another feather in his cap by winning the Filmfare Award in Best Sound Design category for the movie, ‘Uri: The Surgical Strike’.

While 65th Amazon Amazon Filmfare Awards 2020 is slated to be held in Guwahati (Assam) on February 15, the results of technical and short film awards for this year were declared on February 2.

Samal shared the award with Bishwadeep Dipak Chatterjee for the Vicky Kaushal-starrer 2019 military action movie.

He has earlier worked as a sound designer for ‘Padmavat’, ‘Bajirao Mastani’, ‘PK’, ‘Pink’, ‘Three Idiots’ and ‘Tanu Weds Manu Returns’. He won the National Award for Best Audiography for on location sound recording for ‘Madras Cafe’ (2013) at the 61st National Film Awards.

A native of Jajpur, Samal joined FTII, Pune, after MSc in Physics much against his parents’ wishes. “My physics background has helped me to understand sound engineering better, but then it boils down to creativity,” one of the sought-after sound designers in Bollywood had told Odisha Bytes earlier.

He had also worked as a sound recordist for Odia movie ‘Krushna-Kaberi’ in 1999.