A still from Payal Kapadia's 'All we imagine as light'
Cannes: For the first time in 30 years, an Indian film by a Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) alumnus Payal Kapadia, All We Imagine as Light, was nominated for the Palme d’or, the highest award at the 77th Festival de Cannes this year. Kapadia’s film, which centres around the lives of two nurses, won the Grand Prix, the second position in the category, while the American film Anora, the story of a young sex worker from Brooklyn, directed by Sean Baker, won the Palme d’or.
With her win, Payal Kapadia becomes the first Indian to bag this prestigious award. This comes after 30 years when Shaji N Karun’s Swaham competed for the highest honour.
Film and Television Institute of India’s student Chidananda S Naik bagged the first prize in the La Cinef section for Sunflowers Were the First Ones to Know, a 15-minute short film based on a Kannada folklore.
Payal’s film, which is about Nurse Prabha, whose routine was troubled when she received an unexpected gift from her estranged husband, was granted official Indo-French co-production status by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, under the signed Audio-Visual treaty between India and France. Permission for the shooting of the film was also granted by the Ministry in Maharashtra (Ratnagiri and Mumbai). The film received Interim approval for 30% of the Qualifying Co-production expenditure under the Incentives Scheme of the Government of India for Official Co-production.
Sunflowers Were the First Ones to Know, an FTII film is a production of the FTII’s TV Wing’s One-year programme where four students from different disciplines – Direction, Electronic Cinematography, Editing, and Sound – worked together for one project as a year-end coordinated exercise. Before joining FTII in 2022, Chidanand S Naik was also selected as one of the 75 Creative Minds at the 53rd International Film Festival of India (IFFI), an initiative of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting to recognize and support budding young artists in the field of Cinema. It is important to note that an India-born Mansi Maheshwari’s Bunnyhood, an animated film, bagged the third prize in the La Cinef Selection.
The Festival also celebrated the work of world-famous Director Shyam Benegal. After 48 years of its release in India Benegals’ Manthan, preserved at the National Film Archives of India (NFDC-NFAI under the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting) and restored by the Film Heritage Foundation, was showcased at Cannes in the classic section.
Cinematographer Santosh Sivan, known for his work in Indian cinema, became the first Asian to be awarded the prestigious Pierre Angénieux Tribute award at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival in recognition of his “career and exceptional quality of work”. Another individual who made history at Cannes is Anasuya Sengupta as she became the first-ever Indian to win the Best Actress award for her performance in Konstantin Bojanov directed The Shameless in the ‘Un Certain Regard’ category.
Another independent filmmaker who shone at Cannes was Maisam Ali, also an FTII alumnus. His film In Retreat was screened at the ACID Cannes sidebar programme. It was the first time an Indian film was screened in the section run by the Association for the Diffusion of Independent Cinema, since its inception in 1993.
After 11 days of the film festival, the Jury of the 77th Festival de Cannes, chaired by American director, screenwriter and actress Greta Gerwig, surrounded by Turkish screenwriter and photographer Ebru Ceylan, American actress Lily Gladstone, French actress Eva Green, Lebanese director and screenwriter Nadine Labaki, as well as Spanish director and screenwriter Juan Antonio Bayona, Italian actor Pierfrancesco Favino, Japanese director Kore-eda Hirokazu and French actor and producer Omar Sy, presented its winners’ list among the 22 films presented in Competition this year on May 25, 2024.
– global bihari bureau
