It was a triple feat for Indian talent at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival with Payal Kapadia\u2019s \u201cAll We Imagine As Light\u201d, \u201cSunflowers Were the First Ones to Know\u201d by FTII student Chidananda S Naik, and Anasuya Sengupta of \u201cThe Shameless\u201d fame winning major awards in each of the three competitive sections of the prestigious gala.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The 77th edition of Cannes, which concluded on Saturday, was undoubtedly the best year for the country which found space at the fest through eight Indian, or India-themed, films.
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 \u201cAll We Imagine as Light\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThank you, Cannes Film Festival for having our film here. Please don\u2019t wait 30 years to have another Indian film,\u201d she said in her speech.
The movie earned the honour, the second-most prestigious prize of the gala after the Palme d\u2019Or, which went to American director Sean Baker for \u201cAnora\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAll We Imagine as Light\u201d, a Malayalam-Hindi feature starring Kani Kusruti, Divya Prabha and Chhaya Kadam, revolves around three women in Mumbai who go on a road trip to a beach town.
Kapadia\u2019s movie, her feature directorial debut, is the first Indian film in 30 years and first ever by an Indian female director to be showcased in main competition, last being Shaji N Karun\u2019s \u201cSwaham\u201d (1994).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That \u201cAll We Imagine As Light\u201d will win an award became almost certain when it received glowing reviews following its premiere, with some international critics describing it as a \u201cportrait of urban connection\u201d and \u201cpoetic meditation\u201d as well as comparing Kapadia\u2019s work to that of masters like Satyajit Ray and Wong Kar Wai.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Though the second most prestigious prize at Cannes, Grand Prix has a storied history with prominent titles including this year\u2019s Oscar winner \u201cThe Zone of Interest\u201d and Park Chan-wook\u2019s revenge drama \u201cOldboy\u201d as part of the list.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAll We Imagine as Light\u201d has already found distributors for its North America release, but it\u2019s unclear when the film will be screened in India.
Writer-lyricist Varun Grover said it was an \u201cunbelievable day\u201d for Indian cinema.
\u201cDissent, in art and in life, is a tough path to choose. But sometimes it does create magic,\u201d he wrote on X.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kapadia, who led a student protest against the appointment of actor-politician Gajendra Chauhan as FTII chairman, had won the Oeil d\u2019or (Golden Eye) award at Cannes for acclaimed documentary \u201cA Night of Knowing Nothing\u201d which premiered under Director\u2019s Fortnight section in 2021. Her 2017 short film \u201cAfternoon Clouds\u201d opened at Cannes under Cinefondation category, dedicated to supporting the next generation of talented filmmakers. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It was a triple feat for Indian talent at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival with Payal Kapadia\u2019s \u201cAll We Imagine As Light\u201d, \u201cSunflowers Were the First Ones to Know\u201d by FTII student Chidananda S Naik, and Anasuya Sengupta of \u201cThe Shameless\u201d fame winning major awards in each of the three competitive sections of the prestigious […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":425316,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[688],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-425313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-infotainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=425313"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425313\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/425316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=425313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=425313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=425313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}