At the 77th Cannes Film Festival—considered among the biggest by filmmakers and cinephiles—an Indian filmmaker, Payal Kapadia, received the Grand Prix for her debut feature ‘All We Imagine As Light’. This is only the second time a film by an Indian filmmaker has bagged the award in the competition category since the festival began in 1946. The last Indian film to make it to this section was Shaji N. Karun’s ‘Swaham’ in 1994.

The Grand Prix, French for “Grand Prize”, is the second-biggest award in the festival after the Palme d’Or, or “The Golden Palm”.

“It was already a dream to be selected for ‘In Competition’, this is beyond my imagination,” a beaming Kapadia said in her acceptance speech, adding, “please don’t wait another 30 years to have another Indian film.” Kapadia’s film, described as a “magical ode to nocturnal Mumbai” and filled with “humanity and gentleness” is a Malayalam-Hindi feature that revolves around the lives of three nurses who have migrated from their hometowns to work in the big city.

“It took a long time to make it but when I first heard the script, I knew it will make it to Cannes,” Himanshu Prajapati, who wrote the dialogues for the film, told The Morning Context.

But Kapadia, a former student of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), and her team were not the only Indians who won accolades at Cannes this year. Another FTII student, Chidananda S. Naik, won the La Cinef award for the best short for his film ‘Sunflowers Were the First Ones to Know’. Anasuya Sengupta, a production designer, who featured in Bulgarian director Konstantin Bojanov’s ‘The Shameless’, won the award for Best Actor in the Un Certain Regard category. Kapadia’s batchmate from FTII, Maisam Ali's film, also made it to ACID—a Cannes sidebar event—becoming the first Indian entry in that segment.

Before we break down these different award categories, let’s understand the importance of the Grand Prix.

The ‘Grand Prix’: The term’s association with Formula 1 racing is not only incidental. The French term used to denote both—key prize in one of the world’s most prestigious film festivals and races—is almost a reminder of the deep-rooted connection France has to both cinema and motorsports.

Motor racing is largely believed to have begun in the closed streets of France in the late 19th century where enthusiasts, often part of automobile clubs, took part in speed races. The lexicon became part of motor sports around 1906, when a race called ‘Grand Prix de l’Automobile Club of France’, also known as ‘Grand Prix of France’, was organized in Le Mans. The term has stuck ever since. Meaning a great prize, the term signifies the prestige associated with races and competitions, so it’s not too far fetched that France termed its topmost film award the same.

While France’s association with cinema has often been narrowed to the French new wave or Nouvelle Vague—a style of filmmaking emerging during the 1950s-60s that rejected the big studio culture, expressed complex philosophical ideas in its narrative and experimented with innovative techniques and forms—the country’s contribution to films predates this. The nation was the centre of a film movement even before the emergence of the Nouvelle Vague.

What we now know as the Cannes Film Festival started out as a parallel movement to defy the Axis powers after they tried to rig the 1938 Venice Mostra—the biggest film festival at the time. An outraged France, US and UK left the Mostra, vowing not to return. It was right then that a French diplomat began conceiving of the country playing host to a festival to replace the Mostra. But to rival Venice, France had to pick a setting just as beautiful. Eventually Cannes, a beautiful town on the French Riviera, was picked.

In 1939, a year after the countries quit the Mostra, Cannes was scheduled to host the first International Film Festival. But right before the festival was to be inaugurated, Germany invaded Poland, marking the beginning of World War II. So, it wasn’t until 1946 that the festival finally took off. In its inaugural year, “every nation represented [in the competition category] left with a Grand Prix and this first Festival finished on a unanimous note of success.” It was in that year that Indian filmmaker Chetan Anand got the Grand Prix for his film ‘Neecha Nagar’.

Between 1947 and 1954, all selections of the international competition section vied for one main award—the Grand Prix. In 1955, the Palme d’Or was introduced, with the Grand Prix going to the runner-up.

Over the years, the festival has gone on to add several selections and award categories.

Cannes categories: The Cannes Film Festival has strict rules about submissions. However, there’s no gatekeeping and anyone can submit a film as long as these criteria are met.

A selection committee then shortlists films from the entries it gets. The films that get picked are referred to as Festival de Cannes’ ‘Official Selection’. From these, the committee then decides under which category a film can be placed.

The festival has 3 main categories:

In Competition: This is the main event where the best selections in both feature and short film categories compete for the top prize. These awards are decided by a jury—comprising big names in the cinema industry globally. To be selected for this category alone is a big deal for most filmmakers. Apart from Chetan Anand and Shaji N. Karun, V. Shantaram, Raj Kapoor, M.S. Sathyu, Satyajit Ray and Mrinal Sen are the only other Indian filmmakers who have competed in this category.

This year’s 10-member jury for feature films was led by American director and actress Greta Gerwig. Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda and Lebanese director Nadine Labaki were also part of it. This year’s Palme d’Or for feature films was awarded to American filmmaker Sean Baker for his film ‘Anora’. Kapadia took home the Grand Prix, joining a list of cinema auteurs including Asghar Farhadi, Spike Lee, Xavier Dolan, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Jim Jarmusch and Werner Herzog.

The Palme d’Or is largely considered the highest honour awarded to non-commercial or arthouse films. The Grand Prix is the second-highest honour bestowed by the festival. Arguably, these two top prizes are the holy grail for offbeat filmmakers. Winning these and being noticed by the Cannes jury allows them to be more widely seen, get better distribution deals and make future funding easier.

A separate Palme d’Or is also awarded to the best short film. Juries for both are separate.
Un Certain Regard: This category was started in 1978 to showcase new films and filmmakers who did not make it to the competition section, but whose work was worthy of praise owing to innovative technique or style. In 2015, Neeraj Ghaywan was awarded the 'Promising Future Prize' for his film ‘Masaan’ under this category.
La Cinef: Introduced in 1998 as ‘Cinéfondation’, this section of the festival showcases work of film school students. Seven years after the section was created, the initiative also added a residency programme, inviting young directors to polish their work with the idea to foster young talent. Kapadia’s film ‘Afternoon Clouds’ first featured in this category in 2017 and she was part of the residency programme in 2019-2020. In 2020, FTII alumnus Ashmita Guha Neogi’s film ‘CatDog’ won the top prize. This year’s top prize in this segment was also bagged by an FTII student—Chidananda S. Naik.

Besides these, other films are screened or showcased at Cannes sidebar events such as the Directors’ Fortnight, Marché du Film (Film Market) and Association du Cinéma Indépendant pour sa Diffusion (ACID). This year, FTII student Maisam Ali’s debut feature ‘In Retreat’ was screened in the ACID segment. Cannes also has the Camera d’Or or “Golden Camera” award and the L'Oeil d'or or “Golden Eye” for documentaries. In 2022, Shaunak Sen’s Delhi-based documentary ‘All That Breathes’ won the L'Oeil d'or.

Apart from the festival and its sidebars, Cannes is also popular—and infamous at the same time—for its glamour quotient that often overshadows the non-mainstream nature of the films it tries to promote.

The criticism against Cannes: Over the past few years, the film festival has come under attack for two major reasons. One, that the festival has become over-glamourized and two, that over time it has only been grooming and rewarding a certain kind of talent.

Coming to the first point. The presence of celebrities at Cannes’ red carpet has been part of its USP. It’s a great way for beauty and fashion brands to promote themselves through the celebrities who make appearances there. For example, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, who made her first appearance with Shah Rukh Khan at the festival in 2002, has long been associated with the Cannes red carpet. She is a brand ambassador of L’Oreal Paris, which is Cannes’ official makeup partner.

Likewise, several other brands and organizations who have partnered with the festival in some way have invited popular social media influencers to walk the red carpet. Reports have also claimed that many of these influencers paid for red carpet appearances and attendee spots.

“I went there in 2006. I still remember Aishwarya Rai’s image was plastered across as the face of Indian independent cinema. It took a Payal [Kapadia] and 18 years for that to change,” Anirban Datta, who heads the direction department at the Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute, told The Morning Context. Datta’s film ‘Tetris’ was part of the Cinefondation category in 2006. “While the greatest filmmakers have walked that red carpet, Cannes is still quite the circus,” Datta adds.

Prajapati, who is part of Kapadia’s team, also echoes the sentiment. “So many films by Indians have made it to Cannes before in different and very renowned categories…Maisam made it to ACID this year, but the reception for us has certainly been different. After Payal’s win, people are realizing that there is such a prize and such a category and suddenly the popularity status of the festival has shifted from celebrities, if only a little.”

On the second point about the kind of films that make it to Cannes, a filmmaker and former FTII student, who did not wish to be named, told The Morning Context that Cannes has always been a very market-driven festival that ends up promoting only “marketable” films.

“If you notice, these films are great no doubt, but how far do they push the politics? They could be about protests or regimes but they have a very miopic view of society. Cannes is prestigious, some of the filmmakers we worship have been recognized there, so it matters what the festival rewards,” this person said. They added that film festivals like Berlin, Venice and Locarno, which are more open to emerging filmmakers and have equally interesting and rigorous selections, do not enjoy the status that Cannes does.

Datta and Prajapati also say that the way festival circuits like Cannes work, it is much more likely that someone like Kapadia, whose work has been noticed by the Cinéfondation before, can make it to the festival again.

“There is no doubt about the merit [of Kapadia’s film] but these festivals also groom talents they have their eye on and they’ve had an eye on her work for some time now… I’m an atheist who has been praying for her to win but one has to say that for every Payal that gets noticed there are 100 others with similar rigour that get obscured,” says Datta, who is also a former FTII professor and has taught Kapadia. “It is the way of the festivals,” he says.

”For some films to make it to certain categories it requires producers from that country. No matter how much merit the film has, the tipping push comes from who is producing the film and how influential they are. It also really matters what country of origin the film will be classified as,” says the filmmaker who did not want to be named.

A former festival programmer associated with a major film festival in India for four years told TMC on condition of anonymity that festivals have ideological and curatorial philosophies. Sometimes, filmmakers from some countries could get additional focus because of certain diplomatic relations between the host country and the filmmaker’s, they said. While this person cautioned that Cannes may not work the same way, “generally, juries can take a call on what kind of filmmaking ideology they want to promote. It could be based on gender, region or themes.”

All said, the hope remains that the reception Kapadia has received after her win paves the way for more Indian filmmakers and their work to be recognized with the same fanfare.

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Lead illustration by Ujjaini Dutta.

Correction: An earlier version of this story wrongly said that Maisam Ali won the top award in the ACID section. This has been corrected to say that the film was the first-ever Indian entry in that segment. The error is regretted.