‘All We Imagine As Light’ at Cannes 2024: Celebrating Indian cinema on French Riviera

It was a night to remember in Cannes. As the sun gradually set on the Mediterranean on September 19, 1946, American operatic lyric soprano and actress Grace Moore stepped forward and began singing. The song she sang was ‘La Marseillaise’, the national anthem of France. Moore’s rendition immediately struck a chord with the emotional crowd of celebrities, diplomats, and delegates at the Grand Hotel attending the International Film Festival.

Seven years earlier, on September 1, 1939, Cannes had to hastily postpone its first film festival as Hitler invaded Poland on the opening night, and the war that followed left the world devastated. That night in 1946, France, still recovering from political strife, afflicted by shortages, and living with fresh memories of the Nazi occupation, staged a glittering celebration of peace.

In its first edition after World War II, Cannes, applauded by the French Resistance, positioned itself as a counter-festival and a festival of ‘the free world’. Special trains filled with producers, filmmakers, and cineastes began pouring into Cannes.

The municipal casino of Cannes was converted into a cinema seating 850 for around a thousand international delegates, including 360 journalists. Twenty-one nations participated, and film stars including Errol Flynn, Tyrone Power, and Edward G Robinson grabbed everyone’s attention. The festival screened 52 features and 75 shorts from 21 nations.

As exploding fireworks illuminated the night sky from September 20 to October 5, 1946, over the Mediterranean resort of Cannes, the Côte d’Azur became the Hollywood of Europe. Despite the eleventh-hour crisis management and major technical mishaps, the film festival was enthusiastically embraced by the international community, making Cannes the template for all future international film festivals. And after years of suffering, France began to regain its position as a great world power once more.

The famed seaside resort filled with the faint licorice smell of mimosa saw the birth of Italian neo-realism with the screening of Rome Open City by Roberto Rossellini. The festival brought some of the best films from around the world, including Jean Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast, Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious, and Gilda by Charles Cukor.

Among the thousand delegates, a young man born in the distant town of Gurdaspur, India, was in Cannes to screen his directorial debut, Neecha Nagar. Chetan Anand, the highly educated son of a lawyer, had no previous experience in cinema or family in the film industry.

For his debut film, written by Hayatullah Ansari with dialogues by KA Abbas, he cast his wife Uma Anand along with Kamini Kaushal, Rafiq Anwar, Rafi Peer, and a much younger Zohra Sehgal. The music for the film was composed by sitar maestro Pandit Ravi Shankar.

The film that effectively used the expressionist montage technique to portray the gulf between the rich and the poor appealed to the jury at Cannes. Chetan Anand’s Neecha Nagar became the first Indian film to be honoured at Cannes, sharing the top prize, the Grand Prix du Festival International du Film.

Inspired by the success of Neecha Nagar at Cannes, a young Indian advertising executive, Satyajit Ray, wrote a letter to Chetan Anand saying that he was making his own first film. Another aspiring filmmaker who saw the film during its limited screenings in India was Mrinal Sen. In 1956, towards the end of the Cannes Film Festival, an unknown Indian film was scheduled to be screened at midnight. It was titled ‘Pather Panchali’ and was the debut film of Satyajit Ray.

Pather Panchali’s journey from Calcutta to Cannes was fraught with political shenanigans. Ultimately, the direct intervention of the Prime Minister’s office enabled the print to reach the projection room at the Palais de Festival in Cannes as India’s official entry.

However, the national award-winning film had arrived in Cannes starved of any advance publicity and the filmmaker was not present. Ray later recalled, “I had no means of going, so I stayed back and held my breath. As I learnt later, the official screening of the film took place around midnight. The jury had already, on the same day, sat through four long features and decided to skip the Indian entry.”

The sole official screening of Pather Panchali was also eclipsed by the most sought-after invitation: the Japanese dinner for publicising Akira Kurosawa’s I Live In Fear, hosted on the rooftop of Hotel Martinez overlooking the Mediterranean. Some critics nevertheless persisted in watching the Indian film instead. They came out of the cinema mesmerised by the unforgettable experience.

Ray’s expressive portrait of a family living in rural India presented one of the most breathtaking scenes in all of world cinema—Apu and his sister’s first glimpse of a train in motion. The jury was persuaded to rescreen the film, and then on the night of May 11 in Cannes, Maurice Lehmann, the president of the jury, revealed the winners from the finest films the world had to offer. He slowly detailed, “Prix du document humain: Pather Panchali, Inde." Ray’s debut film won the Best Human Document award at Cannes, and it was accepted in absentia.

Although the film was denied the honour of Palme d‘Or and handed an improvised award, The New York Times’ Howard Thompson concluded, “Pather Panchali, a labour of love and the first film made by the Indian Satyajit Ray, was the most important picture of the festival.” With the discovery of a new masterpiece of poetic cinema, a brilliant and original cinematic idiom made itself visible across the world.

Since 1946, Cannes has continued to celebrate an international cinematic renaissance and encourage artistic exploration year after year. The festival introduced the Italian neo-realists. The French Nouvelle Vague was born there. So did gritty Hollywood. The best of the festival premieres at Cannes include 400 Blows, The Tin Drum, La Dolce Vita, The Birds, Taxi Driver, Apocalypse Now, and Pulp Fiction. Cannes has discovered and fêted Hitchcock, Godard, Truffaut, Scorsese, Coppola, and Tarantino.

India too has its history at Cannes. Besides applauding Satyajit Ray, Bimal Roy was one of the winners of the International Prize for Do Bigha Zameen in 1954. Over the years, V Shantaram’s Amar Bhoopali (1952), Raj Kapoor’s Awaara (1953), Satyajit Ray’s Parash Pathar (1958), and MS Sathyu’s Garm Hava (1974) were selected for Cannes’ Competition segment. Mrinal Sen, who was a Cannes regular with many of his films in competition over the years and a Jury member in 1982, won the Jury Prize (Prix du Jury) in 1983 for his film Kharij, sometimes translated as ‘The Case is Closed’. The Camera d’Or at Cannes for the best first film was won twice by Indian filmmakers: Mira Nair’s Salaam Bombay in 1988 and Murali Nair’s Marana Simhasanam (Throne of Death) in 1999.

In April 1994, the editor of Screen International excitedly called me from London to inquire about Swaham (My Own) made by Indian filmmaker Shaji Neelakantan Karun, who had been selected for the competition section at Cannes. Through several long-distance calls in the pre-cell phone era to ‘God’s own country’ I did track down and interview the shy director and wrote about his film for Screen International.

Shaji’s debut film Piravi (1988) won the Caméra d’Or, the Mention d’honneur at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival, and Swaham competed for the Palme d’Or, the top prize at Cannes, the Palme d’Or that was introduced in 1955.

Now, three decades later, between May 14 and 25, 2024, thousands of fans will line the road in Cannes, hoping for a glimpse of stars. Paparazzi will snap photographs, and Instagram will ensure worldwide publicity as Indian filmmaker Payal Kapadia will walk the red carpet for the world premiere of her film All We Imagine As Light at Cannes.

India is once again featured in the main competition at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival after a hiatus of 30 years. Kapadia will be competing for the sought-after Palme d’Or along with some of the most celebrated names in world cinema: Francis Ford Coppola (Megalopolis), David Cronenberg (The Shrouds), Paul Schrader (Oh Canada), Sean Baker (Anora), Yórgos Lánthimos (Kinds Of Kindness) and Paulo Sorrentino (Parthenope). Kapadia earlier in 2021 won the Golden Eye Award at Cannes for best documentary for A Night of Not Knowing Nothing and her film Afternoon Clouds was part of the Cinefondation section in 2017. British-Indian filmmaker Sandhya Suri’s debut feature, Santosh, has also been selected for the ‘Un Certain Regard’ section in 2024.

History is about to be made, and Indian cinema is once again going to be celebrated on the French Riviera.

The writer is the biographer of Subhas Chandra Bose, Har Dayal and Sardar Patel and is the author of ‘India on the World Stage’. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.