India doesn't support 'Cannes kind' of cinema
India doesn't support 'Cannes kind' of cinema…Mumbai, india didn’t have any moment at Cannes, says filmmaker Anurag Kashyap, stressing that the victory of independent filmmakers at the european gala is theirs alone and the country doesn’t support that kind of award winning cinema. india won an unprecedented three awards at the 77th edition of the Cannes Film festival last month Payal Kapadia became the first ever director from india to win the Grand Prix for her movie "All We Imagine As Light", anasuya Sengupta was awarded best actress in the Un Certain Regard strand for “The Shameless”, and FTII student Chidananda S. Naik earned the best short film award at the La Cinef section for “Sunflowers Were the First Ones to Know”.“I get very upset when it's said 'India@Cannes'. This is a boost… a shot in the arm for a lot of independent filmmakers but their victory is their own," Kashyap told PTI in an interview here. “India didn't have any moment at Cannes, not a single of those films are Indian. We need to address it the way it should be addressed. india has stopped supporting such cinema, the kind of cinema that was at Cannes,” he said. He said Kapadia's "All We Imagine as Light", which was also the first film from india in 30 years to feature in the main competition at Cannes known for giving a platform to new voices, received funding from a French company. The Malayalam-Hindi feature, which earned the second highest award at Cannes after Palme d'Or, is an Indo-French co-production between Petit Chaos from france and Chalk and cheese Films from India.
There were several films at Cannes with either India-set stories or indian talent at the helm, but most were co-productions with banners from other countries. Indian-British filmmaker sandhya Suri's “Santosh” and karan Kandhari’s “Sister Midnight” were funded by the UK, while Konstantin Bojanov’s “The Shameless” was almost self-funded. However, Chidanand's "Sunflowers..." is a production of the tv Wing one-year programme under the Film and television Institute of India.“India just likes to take credit for a lot of things, they do not support these films, and they don’t even support these films to have a release in cinema,” Kashyap said. In 2021, Kapadia had won an award at Cannes for the documentary “A Night of Knowing Nothing” but that is yet to be released in India. "Stop taking credit for it. Let’s stop this fake celebration... Even if the film is released, no one will go to watch it in the theatre,” the 51-year-old said.
There were several films at Cannes with either India-set stories or indian talent at the helm, but most were co-productions with banners from other countries. Indian-British filmmaker sandhya Suri's “Santosh” and karan Kandhari’s “Sister Midnight” were funded by the UK, while Konstantin Bojanov’s “The Shameless” was almost self-funded. However, Chidanand's "Sunflowers..." is a production of the tv Wing one-year programme under the Film and television Institute of India.“India just likes to take credit for a lot of things, they do not support these films, and they don’t even support these films to have a release in cinema,” Kashyap said. In 2021, Kapadia had won an award at Cannes for the documentary “A Night of Knowing Nothing” but that is yet to be released in India. "Stop taking credit for it. Let’s stop this fake celebration... Even if the film is released, no one will go to watch it in the theatre,” the 51-year-old said.