Payal Kapadia REACTS to Cannes triumph: “Last few days have been like a dream, greatest learning was being at the FTII”

Filmmaker Payal Kapadia and his team made India proud at the recently-concluded Cannes Film Festival. Their film All We Imagine As Light won the prestigious The Grand Prix Award at the fest. It stars Kani Kusruti, Divya Prabha and Chhaya Kadam in pivotal roles. Following this feat, it is obvious for the cinema lovers in India wanting to hear from Kapadia. The young filmmaker has now given her reaction following their triumph in Cannes.Kapadia starts the detailed statement by saying, “The last few days have been like a dream!” She went onto extend gratitude for the innumerable congratulatory messages that she and her team have been receiving in the last few days.The young filmmaker also revealed that it took long for them to make the film and that it was in its post-production stage when they found out that it’s selected for the competition at Cannes. “This was beyond what we had expected. It made us both excited and nervous. So many great filmmakers whose work I admired would be there with us, watching our film! As our screening came closer we were all anxious. I felt encouraged when the amazing actors from the film arrived to be with us. Just one year ago, before the start of the monsoon, we had started preparation on the film and now exactly one year later we were all together again but in a completely different context and a completely different world. It’s always a pleasure when a unit can be like a family of friends. And this is an extension of what our film is about.”Payal admitted that she comes from an artistic family, so she was already privileged. But despite that, she said that it hasn’t been easy for the women in her family to choose the professions they did. “My mother studied at the JJ School of Arts and my sister at JNU (Jawaharlal Nehru University) and these institutes allowed us to take up the professions that we did. For me, the greatest learning was being at the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), where I was a student for five years,” she said.Sharing her experience at the FTII, Kapadia added, “FTII was a space where we could not only formulate our thoughts about filmmaking but also about the world we inhabit. Filmmaking does not exist in a vacuum. It is through debates and discussions, questions and self-reflection that we move closer to the films we choose to make. FTII is a place that encourages independent thoughts. My classroom was so diverse! We had students from every corner of the country. We didn’t always agree with each other and it was in these differences that we learnt from one another.”Also Read: Vijay Varma responds to Gajendra Chauhan’s comment on Payal Kapadia’s Cannes Win: “Sir yeh chup rehne ka time tha...”