The 2024 Cannes Film Festival was a big success for Indian talent. 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 all won major awards in different categories.
This was a significant achievement for Indian cinema, with eight Indian or India-themed films featured at the festival. Kapadia, an alumna of the Film & Television Institute of India (FTII), made history by becoming the first Indian filmmaker to win the Grand Prix award for "All We Imagine as Light."
Additionally, the director recently made her debut on X after fake accounts attributed to her started circulating on social media.
"Thank you everyone for the good wishes! I'm really overwhelmed! I prefer to stay away from social media. But I noticed some fake accounts on my name so I thought it best to start my account. This is me!" Kapadia wrote in her first post on the microblogging site.
According to X, the page was created in May 2024.
"All We Imagine As Light," Kapadia's feature directorial debut, is the first Indian film in 30 years and the first by an Indian female director to be showcased in the main competition. The last was Shaji N Karun's "Swaham" (1994).
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The movie earned the honour of being the second-most prestigious prize of the gala, after the Palme d'Or, which was awarded to American director Sean Baker for "Anora".
"All We Imagine as Light" is a Malayalam-Hindi feature film starring Kani Kusruti, Divya Prabha, and Chhaya Kadam. The story revolves around three women in Mumbai who go on a road trip to a beach town.
That the film would win an award became almost certain when it received glowing reviews following its premiere, with some international critics describing it as a "portrait of urban connection" and "poetic meditation" as well as comparing Kapadia's work to that of Satyajit Ray and Wong Kar Wai.
The production designer Sengupta played a significant role in Bulgarian director Konstantin Bojanov's "The Shameless" and became the first Indian to win the Best Actress prize in Un Certain Regard.
"The Shameless" delves into a dark world of exploitation and misery, portraying the bond between two sex workers.
Naik's "Sunflowers…" won the La Cinef first prize (film school fiction or animated films), adding to FTII's achievements.
Based on a Kannada folktale, the movie tells the story of an old woman who steals a rooster, which causes the sun to cease to rise in the village.
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