FC Gold 2023 Winner: Avinash Arun | School Of Lies

Instead of rose-tinted glasses, director and cinematographer Avinash Arun's is the blue-tinted gaze, and it makes the world of sordid secrets and dark legacies in School of Lies simultaneously heartbreakingly sad and transcendental in its beauty.

In this keenly-observed show, the school is a place of friendships, unbroken cycles of trauma, and silences. The natural beauty offers a contrast to the equally natural cruelty of boys being boys, and 'old boys' being 'old boys'.

With towering performances from child actors in particular, School of Lies offers an insightful portrait of modern Indian masculinity at its most tender and toxic.