Mahesh Dattani's offbeat English feature film Mango Souffle has been honoured with the best motion picture award at the Barcelona film festival. The film, which is about gay love and heterosexuality, bombed at the Indian box office but has won much critical acclaim at international film festivals.

'The Mostra Lambda Award was given to Mango Souffle to acknowledge the fact that it is a film that talks about homosexuality as a normal phenomenon,' said the festival's director, Jaume Gil I Llopart. 'I appreciate Dattani for having given visibility to this issue through the medium of cinema.'

Llopart pointed out that it was indeed courageous of Dattani to attempt such a film in a country like India where 'homosexuality is still not recognised, and is not even legal.' He added, 'We think your film is beautiful in terms of cinematography. It also has enormous valour. Socially too, it makes a lot of sense.'

The actual award is, as Llopart puts it, 'a nice statue.'

Dattani is especially proud of this award, though he did not accompany his film to the festival. "To think I almost did not send the print to Barcelona because of heavy demands for it elsewhere," he remarks.

Now, he fervently wishes he had waited for the film to tour the international circuit for a year before he released it in India. "I am sure it would have then done better in the theatres here. At least people would have known it did well at film festivals outside and had picked up awards."

Dattani, who will shortly leave for Tirunelveli in Tamil Nadu for the second schedule of his next film Morning Raaga, has resolved not to repeat his error. Raaga, he vows, will first release abroad and will be shown in India only after it has either succeeded or flopped on the international film circuit.

Raaga, which is Dattani's second film as a director, is different from Souffle. It has an acceptable theme, based on the life of a classical music singer. The film, which stars Shabana Azmi, Perizaad Zorabian and Prakash Rao (son of Telugu film producer K Raghavendra Rao) should be ready for release by the end of the year.

While Souffle is based on Dattani's play, On A Muggy Night In Mumbai, Raaga is an original screenplay written by Dattani.