OTTplay Awards 2023: Raj and DK, Pavan Sadineni clinch Best Director award, share honours for Farzi, Dayaa

Director duo Raj Nidimoru, Krishna DK, popularly, known as Raj-DK and Telugu filmmaker Pavan Sadineni have jointly clinched the Best Director (Series) award at the OTT Play Awards 2023, for their web shows Farzi (Amazon Prime Video) and Dayaa (Disney+ Hotstar) respectively.

Raj-DK and Pavan Sadineni received the award from popular actress Sonalli Seygall in this year’s edition, held in Mumbai on October 29. In their acceptance speech, the filmmakers expressed their happiness about the recognition and in this vein, Pavan Sadineni said, "Thanks to OTTplay for this beautiful award. I would like to dedicate this award to no one else except myself because all these years, I have been dedicating a lot of things to a lot of people, so, I think it's enough (laughs). I deserve this and let me dedicate it to myself."

Raj & DK on the other hand, acknowledged the importance of a great cast and dedicated the award to the Farzi ensemble. "Good to see you guys (OTTplay) grow so fast and rapidly. We are just fortunate to work with great actors and grateful that we get to do a lot of good work over these years and we have worked with amazing technicians, an amazing crew and brilliant actors across India. What more can I ask for (sic)," said Raj Nidimoru.

Krishna DK echoed his partner's sentiments and said, "He said everything there is to say but, anyway, shout-out to our co-writers Sita Menon and Suman Kumar and all the actors - we have a fantastic cast in Farzi. It's easy to say we did a good job directing but that would not be possible if we didn't have good actors who can actually bring our characters to life. So, they deserve this as much as we do."

This is the second win for Raj-DK at the OTTplay awards. In the 2022 edition of the awards, the filmmaker duo’s Family Man 2 (which released on Amazon Prime Video) had won the Best Web Series Award. Meanwhile, this is Pavan Sadineni’s first recognition at the event for his crime drama Dayaa.

Farzi, streaming on Amazon Prime Video, revolves around the cat and mouse chase between a con artist and a task force officer, who’s out to find the mastermind behind the counterfeit note scam in the country. The critically acclaimed show features Shahid Kapoor, Vijay Sethupathi, Raashi Khanna, Amol Palekar, and Kay Kay Menon in key roles.

Also read: Farzi review: Shahid Kapoor and Vijay Sethupathi in an 'artistic' crime saga 

Dayaa, out on Disney+ Hotstar, tells the story of an ordinary freezer van driver, who lands in trouble, as a corpse mysteriously lands in his van during a delivery. What connects the corpse to a missing journalist Kavitha and a corrupt politician Parasurama Raju? Headlined by J D Chakravarthy, the show also stars Eesha Rebba, Remya Nambeesan, Babloo Prithiveeraj, Kamal Kamaraju, Josh Ravi.

Also read: Dayaa review: JD Chakravarthy is at his absolute best in this banger of a crime drama 

OTTplay Awards 2023 brought together the who’s who of Indian cinema at Taj Land’s End on October 29. The only pan-Indian OTT awards show in the country honoured talents across languages – Hindi, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Bangla – for their phenomenal work on OTT.

OTTplay Awards 2023 was presented by Danube Properties alongside Dabur Chyawanprash and driven by Volkswagen, with Colors Infinity being the telecast partner.