SACHIN CHATTE The Cannes Film Festival started on a high note for India, there were six films this time, seven, if you include Manthan (1976), that had an India connection. Payal Kapadia’s All we imagine as light, became the first Indian film in 30 years to compete in the In Competition section, after Shaji Karun’s Swaham, which competed with Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, in 1994. There was also Bunnyhood by Mansi Maheshwari who hails from Meerut in Uttar Pradesh and has been studying in the U.
K. Indian films getting a platform at a festival like Cannes was itself a big achievement – not so big as an industry actually, considering the amount of films we churn out every year. But this was an individual achievement more than anything else.
Take Chidananda Naik whose film Sunflowers were the first to know won the first prize in La Cinef section where the competition is for film school students. He took up filmmaking against all odds just to follow his passion. If someone had to say that four Indians would win an award at Cannes this time, not many would have given that a chance.
But history was created when along with Chidananda, Mansi also won in the La Cinef section bagging the third prize. There was also Anusuya Sengupta who won the Best Actress for The Shameless (directed by Konstantin Bojanov from Bulgaria), which was screened in Un Certain Regard. Then there was the big prize where Payal Kapadia brought home the Grand Prix, the second highest award at the festi.