Jamshedpur, Oct. 10: Durga’s homecoming earlier this month happily coincided with a Jamshedpur-based woman filmmaker’s triumphant return from London.

Biyot Projna Tripathy, 47, has earned accolades at The Nehru Centre, London, for her 52-minute documentary on a UK-based architect with origins in rural Orissa.

Tripathy, an alumnus of FTII, Pune, who teaches at the mass communication department, Karim City College, has made a number of films in the past. But the rave reviews for her latest film, Land of Two World, at The Nehru Centre, the cultural wing of the Indian High Commission, UK, has surprised her beyond words.

Speaking at her Baridih residence here, Tripathy says: “I had to address a distinguished audience before the screening. My creative journey touched issues such as creativity and immigration, with symbolic and physical dimensions.”

The architect on whose life her film is based, Prafulla Mohanti, settled in the UK in the 1960s and rose to acclaim there. But he also stayed by the river Birupa at his village Nanpur in Orissa. Filmmaker Tripathy delved into both worlds.

“It’s the struggle and eventual triumph of an outsider,” she says, adding that seeing life from behind the lens lends it a unique perspective.

In the past, she says, her films such as Hawa Mithai (2001) on Jharkhand’s tribal children, Ladakh, The Land Of Mystery (2003) and Window of Desire (2005) were explorations beyond the obvious.

She also shows reviews by foreign critics — the Dublin-based Antonia Hart and the London-based Astrid Sweetnam. Astrid, meanwhile, has praised the film’s theme.

“It’s a perfect tribute to Mohanti. The filmmaker has presented the struggle of a non-white person in Britain. It is heart-warming,” Astrid writes.

After such high praise, what’s next?

“My film will tour in festivals across France and India,” smiles the achiever, also the wife of a doctor, Vivek Tripathy, now working in Saudi Arabia, and the mother of daughters Neha and Vedayana, both studying in the UK.