New Delhi, April 10 -- At the BAFTAs in February, Lakshmipriya Devi's Boong, a small Manipuri film about a young, mischievous boy's search for his father, inched past studio behemoths Zootopia 2 and Lilo & Stitch and bagged the award for Best Children's and Family Film-the first ever Indian film to win in the category.

The decision to submit Boong to the BAFTAs under the "Children's and Family Film" category was a strategic choice by the film producer. Devi, while clarifying that her film is not a "children's film", just one which happens to have a child protagonist, conceded to "a lack of films for children in India", a lack that Boong, without explicitly intending to, plugged.

This lack has been glaring, given minors make up more than...