Cannes, May 25 (UNI) Mumbai-born filmmaker Payal Kapadia’s Malayalam-Marathi-Hindi language feature film, “All We Imagine As Light”, is the frontrunner for the prestigious Palme d’Or at the 77th Cannes Film Festival.
Set in Mumbai, “All We Imagine As Light” is one of the 22 films vying for the top prize of the influential international film festival in the French Riviera.
An alumnus of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune, Kapadia has emerged as a favourite to win the Palme d’Or in a field that has iconic filmmakers like “The Godfather” director Francis Ford Coppola, French director Jacques Audiard, Canadian director David Cronenberg and Chinese director Jia Zhang-ke.
Other filmmakers in the competition section of the festival include British director Andrea Arnold, Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof, Italian director Paolo Sorrentino, French director Christophe Honore, Ukranian director Yorgos Lanthimos and Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov.
Kapadia is the first Indian filmmaker to be selected to the Cannes competition section in three decades. The last Indian director in the competition for Palme d’Or was Malayalam filmmaker Shaji N Karun in 1994 for “Swaham” (My Own).
An India-France-Netherlands-Luxembourg-Italy co-production, “All We Imagine As Light” stars Malayalam actors Kani Kusruti, Divya Prabha, Hridhu Haroon and Azees Nedumangad along with Marathi actor Chhaya Khadam.
Shot in Mumbai during monsoon and Ratnagiri in Maharashtra last year, “All We Imagine As Light” tells the story of two Kerala nurses in Mumbai negotiating arranged marriages, economic inequalities and communal hatred.
Kapadia had won the Golden Eye Best Documentary Award in Cannes for “A Night of Knowing Nothing” in 2021.
Kapadia was also the first FTII student to be selected to the Cannes festival’s competition for film schools around the world in 2018 for her diploma film, “Afternoon Clouds”, based on the true story of a nurse from Kerala caring for her nonagenarian grandmother in Mumbai.
The Cannes Film Festival will conclude with the Palme d’Or awards ceremony Saturday night.
Earlier this week, Mysuru-based Kannada filmmader Chidananda S Naik’s FTII end-of-course film, “Sunflowers Were The First To Know”, won the First Prize of the Cannes festival’s La Cinef competition for film schools.
Another Indian filmmaker, Meerut-born Mansi Maheshwari, a student of the National Film and Television School in the United Kingdom, won the Third Prize of La Cinef for her animation film, “Bunnyhood”.
On Friday, Bengali actor Anasuya Sengupta won the Best Actress award in the Cannes festival’s Un Certain Regard category for fresh voices in world cinema, for her performance in “The Shameless”, a Hindi feature film set in India and directed by Bulgarian filmmaker Konstantin Bojanov.
