Pankaj Tripathi will receive the ‘Artist of Distinction’ honour at the Indian Film Festival of Melbourne (IFFM) 2026, in recognition of his work in Indian cinema.

It will be the first time the National Award-winning actor attends the festival in Melbourne, Australia, to collect the honour in person.

IFFM 2026 runs from August 13 to 23.

Rani Mukerji will also be honoured at the festival, receiving an Honorary Doctorate, with both actors headlining the event.

Tripathi’s career spans roles such as Sultan Qureshi in Gangs of Wasseypur, Kaleen Bhaiya in Mirzapur, a National Award-winning role in Mimi, and appearances in Newton, Stree, Masaan, OMG 2 and Main Atal Hoon.

(Image: Bollywood Hungama (CC BY 3.0))

Prime Focus Studios has signed Sony Pictures on as the global distributor for Ramayana in markets outside India, a deal described as one of the biggest international distribution agreements for an Indian film.

The film stars Ranbir Kapoor, Yash and Sai Pallavi and is directed by Nitesh Tiwari, with music composed by Hans Zimmer and A.R. Rahman.

Namit Malhotra, founder of Prime Focus Studios, called the Sony Pictures deal a historic moment. The film’s trailer launch has been postponed in the wake of the announcement.

Ramayana will be released internationally in multiple languages, including a premium English-language version, for a wide global rollout.

The film’s distribution within India will continue to be handled by Karan Johar’s Dharma Productions.

(Image: Bollywood Hungama (CC BY 3.0))

There are moments in a creative career that arrive not with noise, but with quiet, undeniable confirmation. For Sharon Shobana Vasudevan — singer, songwriter, composer, producer, and Founder and CEO of Shooting Star Productions — that moment came when Oh My Baby was announced as the winner of the 3rd Place Best Album Award and the 1st Place Best Dancer Award at the Directors Club ‘Value 5’ Album Screening. It was, by any measure, a significant honour. But for those who have followed Sharon Shobana Vasudevan’s journey closely, it felt less like a surprise and more like an inevitability.

Every song begins somewhere before the studio. For Oh My Baby, it began with a feeling — the desire to create something that sat comfortably at the intersection of intimacy and scale. Sharon Shobana Vasudevan, who has spent years developing a creative voice that refuses easy categorisation, envisioned a track that could hold the warmth of folk, the sweep of cinematic composition, and the accessibility of romantic pop — all at once.

It was an ambitious brief. But ambition, for Sharon Shobana Vasudevan, has always been a starting point rather than a destination.

Working alongside co-composer and music director Nathanael Nilesh Raj, she began shaping the sonic landscape of the track — one that would eventually feature additional keys and rhythm programming by T. Darel Jerald Thomas, live instrumentation by Infinity Band — comprising Vimalaveeran and Sures Ravindran — and vocals performed by both Sridhar Sena and Sharon Shobana Vasudevan herself. The result was a track that felt, from the very first listen, like it had been built by people who genuinely cared about every layer of what they were making.

What separates a good song from a great production is almost always the accumulation of careful decisions made long after the composition is complete. Oh My Baby bears the fingerprints of that kind of attention throughout.

Recording took place across multiple sessions — at Atrium Sound Studio under sound engineer Ashish, and at Record Me Studio with Gunasekaran and Nathanael Nilesh Raj. Melodyne work was handled by Charan Kumar at DAW Records, while the mix and master — perhaps the most consequential final step in any production — was entrusted to A.M. Rahmathulla at AH Studios, whose work gave the track the clarity and warmth it needed to travel well across platforms.

For Sharon Shobana Vasudevan, whose background in business management has always informed the way she approaches creative projects, this level of production rigour was never incidental. It was the plan. Sharon Shobana Vasudevan has long understood that the gap between artistic intention and audience connection is frequently a craft problem — and that solving it requires both patience and precision.

Music, for Sharon Shobana Vasudevan, has never existed in isolation from its visual counterpart. Oh My Baby received its cinematic identity through the lens of director and DOP Jithesh C G, whose work on the official music video brought a richness of visual language that elevated the song into something genuinely immersive.

With art direction by Tittagudi Karthick Vasan and team, choreography by dance master Pramesh Dev, lead performances by Sabharish and Sharon Shobana Vasudevan herself, and editing by Srikanth Kanaparthi, the video became far more than a promotional piece. Colour graded by Siyayoudeen of Color Alchemist, it arrived as a fully realised visual statement — one that matched the emotional ambition of the song it accompanied.

The audience noticed.

Before awards committees convene, audiences vote in the only currency that truly matters: attention. And on that count, Oh My Baby made its case emphatically.

The song entered Spotify’s Local Pulse Chennai charts, placing within the top 5 — a meaningful achievement for an independent release in a city with one of India’s most competitive and discerning music audiences. On YouTube, the official music video surpassed 2 million views. Across streaming platforms — Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube Music, JioSaavn, and Gaana — the track accumulated over 200,000 streams.

For a production released under Shooting Star Productions in association with Infinity Band, these figures told a story of genuine reach. This was not algorithmic luck or viral accident. It was a song that connected — and kept connecting.

When the Directors Club ‘Value 5’ Album Screening announced the results, Oh My Baby walked away not with one recognition but two — claiming 3rd Place for Best Album and 1st Place for Best Dancer.

The Best Album recognition placed the project among the finest independent creative productions evaluated at the screening — acknowledged by a community of directors, producers, and creative professionals who understand, from the inside, what it takes to make something genuinely worthy.

The 1st Place Best Dancer Award delivered one of the evening’s most celebrated moments — honouring the choreographic vision of dance master Pramesh Dev and the on-screen performance of Sabharish, whose presence had anchored the song’s emotional and visual narrative from the very first frame.

For Sharon Shobana Vasudevan, the dual recognition held a particular emotional resonance.

“Announcing a happy announcement to everyone — my music video ‘Oh My Baby’ from the Directors Club ‘Value 5’ album screening has won the Best Album Award,” she shared — words that, in their simplicity, captured something true about the spirit in which the entire project had been made. This was never a song built for awards. It was built for people. The awards, in that sense, were the world confirming that the people had already decided.

Sharon Shobana Vasudevan has spent her career demonstrating that creative success and structural discipline are not opposing forces — they are, in fact, each other’s most reliable allies. Oh My Baby is perhaps the clearest expression yet of that philosophy in action.

It is a song conceived with emotional intelligence, executed with production rigour, delivered with visual ambition, and received with genuine public warmth. That it has now also been recognised formally — twice over — by one of the industry’s respected platforms is, for those who have watched Sharon Shobana Vasudevan build her career — from Singapore’s interschool singing competitions to Vasantham Star, from her first independent collaboration with acclaimed Malaysian rapper Psychomantra to the founding of Shooting Star Productions — entirely consistent with the arc she has always been on.

The music, as it always has been with Sharon Shobana Vasudevan, continues to speak for itself.