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Cannes 9.30am (CET)
- All We Imagine as Light’ strong contender for Palme d’Or – Cannes’ top prize. Closing ceremony and awards’ announcements will be made this evening from 5.45pm BST (6.45pm CET).
- Writer-director Payal Kapadia’s second feature has been widely praised and many reckon it will impress Competition jury chair – Greta Gerwig, the American writer-director behind the billion-dollar smash hit, ‘Barbie’. Her eight person jury will decide the Cannes Film Festival prizes.
- Kapadia answering a question from www.asianculturevulture.com at yesterday’s press conference said having three generations of Indian women in the film was very important to her.
- Some have described the story as an ode to Mumbai. Set there during the Monsoon rains, it is centred around two Malayali migrant nurses Prabha (Kani Kusruti) and Anu (Divya Prabha) living in the city and a third woman Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam) who settled in the city of nearly 20 million people, from the coastal Maharashtra-Konkan region many years ago.
- Each represents a different facet of Indian womanhood – Prabha is married but her husband has long since left for Germany and is an absent figure from the film. Hindu Anu is in love with a Muslim Shiaz (Hridhu Haroon) and looking to get more physical but their circumstances make it difficult. Shiaz still lives with his parents, while there is hardly any space at all in the flat Anu shares with Prabha. Parvaty lives in a building that developers want to knock down and develop and she has no papers – her husband has passed away and her son lives elsewhere.
- The three go to a seaside town resort (near Ratnagiri) on the Maharashtra-Konkan coast and it is there that film opens up and lets in the light that will illuminate all three lives…
- Yesterday (May 25), it was announced that Anasuya Sengupta the lead actor in the two of Indian films screening in the Un Certain Regard section, ‘The Shameless’, had won the Best Actress prize. She is a virtual newcomer having never acted since her student days and was a film production designer. Bulgarian director Konstatin Bojanov told acv why he wanted her in a video interview to be out shortly… see Youtube channel soon. We also hear from Sengupta and her co-star Omara Shetty. It is another powerful Indian women-centred tale, just as the other UCR film, ‘Santosh’ is. It is directed by British Indian Sandhya Suri. ‘Sister Midnight‘ another film screened in the Directors Fortnight section here earlier and it too is centred around a woman Uma (played brilliantly by Radhika Apte). It is directed by another British Indian, Karan Kandhari.
- Last night Indian cinematographer Santosh Sivan was presented with his special Pierre Angénieux Tribute Award in the presence of Bollywood star Preity Zinta and Indian ambassador to France, Jawed Ashraf. A special dinner was hosted afterwards at the Majestic Hotel with Sivan, wife and son all in present. There was Rajasthani folk music and dancing. Earlier at the awards ceremony, the audience heard from many film luminaries including Bollywood stars, Shah Rukh Khan, Aamir Khan, directors Mani Ratnam, Gurinder Chadha and Mira Nair, who all sent video tribute messages to Sivan.
- India and Britain were among the prizes too in the La Cinef section here – it salutes filmmakers at recognised film schools. ‘Sunflowers Were the First to Know’ by Chidanand S Naik from the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) in Pune (where Kapadia also trained) won the top prize; while Mansi Maheshwari, a student at the National Film and Television School in Beaconsfield, UK, won third prize for ‘Bunnyhood’.
- See BBC, Variety and The Guardian for the positive reviews – we published something yesterday – and will post a full review after the festival has concluded this evening (May 14-25).
Pictured: Chhaya Kadam, Divya Prabha, Payal Kapadia and Kani Kusruti
Follow on socials for updates and Youtube to watch all video interviews… more coming!
