It was a triple feat for Indian talent at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival with Payal Kapadia's "All We Imagine As Light", "Sunflowers Were the First Ones to Know" by FTII student Chidananda S Naik, and Anasuya Sengupta of "The Shameless" fame winning major awards in each of the three competitive sections of the prestigious gala. Kapadia, an alumna of the Film & Television Institute of India (FTII), charted history by becoming the first Indian filmmaker to win the Grand Prix award for "All We Imagine as Light". The movie earned the honour, the second-most prestigious prize of the gala after the Palme d'Or, which went to American director Sean Baker for "Anora".
Kapadia's movie, her feature directorial debut, is the first Indian film in 30 years and the first ever by an Indian female director to be showcased in the main competition, the last being Shaji N Karun's "Swaham" (1994). Though the second most prestigious prize at Cannes, the Grand Prix has a storied history with prominent titles including this year's Oscar winner "The Zone of Interest" and Park Chan-wook's revenge drama "Oldboy" as part of the list. "All We Imagine as Light" has already found distributors for its North American release, but it's unclear when the film will be screened in India.
Anasuya Sengupta, one of the lead stars of Bulgarian director Konstantin Bojanov's Hindi-language movie, The Shameless, has created history by bagging the Best Actress award in the Un Certain Regard category at the 2024 Cannes Fil.
