A poster of 'All We Imagine As Light'
India broke its 30-year-long hiatus with Payal Kapadia’s feature film All We Imagine As Light entering competition at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival this year. The movie will compete for Palme d’or with Ali Abbasi’s The Apprentice, Andrea Arnold’s Bird, Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Perez and Francis Ford’s Megapolis, among a few others; at the 77th Cannes Film Festival in May 2024. Hollywood filmmaker Greta Gerwig will preside over the feature film jury while Xavier Dolan will preside the Un Certain Regard jury.
The announcement was made during the annual traditional press meet on Thursday in the presence of Iris Knobloch, President of the Festival de Cannes, and Thierry Frémaux, General Delegate. The last Indian film to compete at the Cannes Film Festival was the Malayalam film Swaham. Shaji N Karun’s directorial was in competition at the film festival in 1994.
All We Imagine As Light is an Indo-French production, produced by the French-based company Petit Chaos, and Indian production companies Another Birth, Chalk & Cheese, and Dojo Films. The film is set in the Indian city of Mumbai and tells the tale of two migrant Malayali nurses navigating through their lives, breaking the shackles of a collective consciousness that women are often bound with. The movie features Kani Kusruti (Maharani, Eswaran Sakshiyayi), Diyva Phahba and Hridhu Haroon in important roles.
This will the third time for Kapadia at the French Riviera. Her A Night of Not Knowing Nothing bagged the Golden Eye for Best Documentary in 2021 when it played in the Director’s Fortnight. Her 2017 film Afternoon Clouds was also a part of the Cinefondation section.
Swaham was chosen to compete in the Palme d’or section at Cannes Film Festival in 1994. Prior to Swaham, Mrinal Sen's Bengali language Kharij bagged the jury prize at Cannes in 1983. Chetan Anand’s Neecha Nagar is the only Indian film to have bagged the Palme d’or. Anand’s film went to Cannes in 1946.
V Shantaram’s Amar Bhoopali entered the competition in 1952 while Satyajit Ray’s Parash Pathar went to the competition at Cannes Film Festival in 1958. MS Sathyu’s Garm Hava also competed in 1974.
Apart from Kapadia’s film, British-Indian filmmaker Sandhya Suri’s (I For India, The Field) debut feature film, Santosh will also be seen at the upcoming film festival. It has been selected for Un Certain Regard. Santosh features Shahana Goswami (Zwigato) in an important role in the movie.
Shahana Goswami on a poster of 'Santosh'
Suri has written and directed the film which tells the tale of a recently-windowed woman who is offered her deceased husband’s job as a cop in the rural region of northern India. The film is backed by BFI and has been co-produced by BBC Film with Good Chaos, Suitable Pictures and Razor Film.
Santosh is one of the four BBC-backed films that will be screened in the official selection at the Cannes Film Festival next month. These include Bird, On Becoming a Guinea Fowl, and September Says. Reacting to the development, director of BBC Film Eva Yates says, “We couldn’t be happier for Andrea, Rungano, Sandhya, Ariane and their filmmaking teams, who have made truly brilliant films that we cannot wait for the world to see. The BBC is proud to be a home for their vital work.”
After including a record seven women directors’ films in the competition lineup last year, Cannes Film Festival has pulled down that number this year to four. Last year, the Palme d’or winner was also a woman - Justine Triet won the award for Anatomy of A Fall to become the third woman ever to bag the honor.
Apart from Kapadia, Andrea Arnold (Bird), Coralie Fargeat (The Substance)and Agathe Riedinger (Wild Diamond) are the few women whose work will be featured in the competition section at Cannes Film Festival 2024.
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