At tnhedworld’s foremost lm festival
And social media in‚uencers, India made a big splash
n terms of cinema, and cinema alone, India has made the kind of splash at Cannes 2024 that it has never done before. Eight Indian-produced or Indian-themed titles, including one in contention for the prestigious Palme d’Or and a 30-minute Virtual Reality piece in the festival’s inaugural Immersive Competition, were strewn across various sections of the 77th edition of the lm festival, which concluded yesterday.
“The Indian presence is extremely strong this year,” said Cannes deputy artistic director Christian Jeune at the start of the festival. He should know, as he has been in charge of scouting Indian lms for Cannes for over two decades. “India and China are important markets for lms. They are making a strong comeback to Cannes,” the festival’s artistic
Idirector Thierry Frémaux had said at the press conference in Paris in the second week of April to announce the ocial selection. In the forefront, taking Indian cinema places with their work, were industry names such as Kani Kusruti, Divya Prabha, Radhika Apte, Mita Vashisht, Shahana Goswami, Chhaya Kadam (who has two lms in the festival), Anasuya Sengupta and Omara Shetty. Never before have so many faces from the country’s independent cinema space landed in Cannes with something to show for their eort. “I feel the more regional the treatment of a lm is, the more it speaks an international language,” said actor Kani in an earlier interview with The Hindu, after the selection of her lm All We Imagine as Light for the Palme d’Or award.
In addition to industry people, this year also saw a rise in the number of Indian social media inuencers as attendees on the red carpet and for seaside photo ops, sponsored by cosmetics and fashion brands for the same [see page 4]. While Aishwarya Rai was at the Croisette as global spokeperson for L’Oreal Paris, fellow actor Kiara Advani was representing the country at the Women in Cinema gala dinner.
This was an interesting departure from the rst 20-odd years of the new millennium, when India struggled for representation at Cannes and languished on the festival’s fringes. With the tide now turning dramatically and a panoply of actors of quality rightfully walking the red carpet, the question would be: was this only a ash in the pan? Only time will tell.
Beyond underworld dramas
To be sure, the most noteworthy aspect of Cannes’ Indian picks for 2024 was that they signied a marked shift away from Mumbai underworld dramas of the kind that Anurag Kashyap earned currency with. The selected lms bore encouraging signs for the future of the country’s indie cinema. Not only was the range of voices and visions on show instantly impressive, the artistic and cinematic merit of the lms was beyond question because, for one, none of them was hobbled by market-imposed constraints. These lms came from young directors endowed with unique sensibilities. None of them adheres