Women at the helm as Indian films make a big splash in Cannes

Paris, May 26: Indian cinema has enjoyed a bumper year in Cannes, with seven films from the country screening across the festival’s various strands. FRANCE 24 spoke to filmmaker Payal Kapadia, India’s first Palme d’Or contender in 30 years with her “All We Imagine as Light”, and the cast and director of police procedural “Santosh”, which premiered in the Un Certain Regard sidebar. 

A bridge between cinema’s top players and emerging art-house talent, the Cannes Film Festival has a habit of turning the spotlight on countries and continents that stand out for their creativity, influence or singularity.  

In 2023, African helmers took centre stage, with six films in the official selection and a Carrosse d’Or, which pays tribute to the career of outstanding filmmakers, awarded to Malian film legend Souleymane Cissé.  

The country’s prolific film industry has supplied seven films at the 77th Cannes Film Festival, including two that featured in the official line-up, both of them directed by women. It’s a remarkable turnaround for the giant of South Asian film, once a regular in Cannes but whose French Riviera harvest was starting to look as thin as the country’s Olympics medal haul. 

Payal Kapadia’s “All We Imagine as Light” is the first Indian film to feature in the festival’s main competition in a staggering 30 years. It earned glowing reviews from critics in Cannes, surging to the front of the pack in a wide-open Palme d’Or race.  

There was praise, too, for Sandhya Suri’s “Santosh”, about a woman police officer facing sexism and corruption as she investigates the murder of a young girl from a lower caste in small-town India, which opened in the Un Certain Regard sidebar. 

A poetic tale of love and loss, Kapadia’s movie follows a pair of small-town nurses who find themselves adrift in the sprawling metropolis of Mumbai. While the self-effacing and norm-abiding Prabha (Kani Kusruti) waits patiently for the return of her husband, who has vanished without a trace, her roommate Anu (Divya Prabha) has a secret romance with a young Muslim man as she plots her way out of an arranged marriage – a discrepancy that puts their friendship to the test.  (AFP)