“Cannes film festival is about big-budget films but also remarkable films made in different political regimes by film-makers with little resources” British Actress Kristin Scott Thomas.

Founded in 1946, Cannes Film Festival (Festival de Cannes), known as International Film Festival (Festival international du film), is among the Big Three major European film festivals. The others being Venice Film Festival in Italy and Berlin International Film Festival in Germany.

Among five major international film festivals, are the Toronto International Film Festival in Toronto, Canada, and the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, United States.

Hosted in the seaside town of Cannes, known as the Capital of Cinema, and held around the famous Palais des Festivals which rolls out the red carpet every year for the stars of world cinema, around the emblematic ascent of the steps and its famous Croisette, Cannes Film Festival is a Cinema Paradiso to be.

The pomp, pageantry, the punctilious preparations and the publicity, the glitz and glamour and the fleeting feet of the paparazzi and clicking of the cameras drawing one into a surreal magical world of its own.

Going to Cannes Film Festival is like undertaking the Hajj. True to what locals would vouch: “Qui li ven li vieù” (Whoever goes there, lives there), to one who does so, it is like a cinephile’s dream come true. Be there, be seen, done that, all up, close and personal, the sine quo non for an avowed cineaste.

Drawing over 35,000 plus people from across all profiles of the entertainment and cinema industry, with nearly 4,000 among them being the film critic and the paparazzi, it is like the Indian equivalent of the renowned Kumbh Mela of Cinema.

Cannes, one of the most popular towns on the French Riviera, and its beaches, of course, the International Film Festival and la Croisette, the unmissable seafront promenade, comes alive during the ten-day cinema carnival.

The historic district of Cannes, it is said, is more than the City of Cinema! Right next to the Palais des festivals and its legendary red-carpeted 24 steps, is the Chemin des Etoiles where one can admire hand casts of the biggies of the World of Cinema.

In keeping with its annual traditon and calendar call, the 12-day 77th Edition of Cannes Film Festival, the most publicised event in the world after the Olympic Games, flags off from May 14 to 25 May 2024.

This year’s edition sees American filmmaker and actress Greta Gerwig as jury president for main competition, while French actress Camille Cottin hosts the opening and closing ceremonies.

The nine-member jury, with as many as five women members, also boasts of the renowned Japanese film auteur Kore-Eda Hirokazu, who has lately been on the global spotlight for his monumental films like Broker, The Shoplifters, and the most recent Monster.

While his Shoplifters pouched the coveted Palme d’or at the 71st Festival de Cannes, his Monster, bagged the Best Screenplay at the 76th Festival de Cannes.

The renowned American actress and diva Meryl Streep, who will be the guest of honour, will be honoured with Festival’s Honorary Palme d’or, on the occasion.

What makes Cannes Film Festival so special this year is that two of the Indian feature films and one short film find a pride of place in the screenings to covet the discerning audiences eye.

The showpiece of the Cannes Film Festivel – Competition – Film d’ouverture Section will see Indian film maker Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine As Light vie for the prestigious top honours of Cannes – the Palme d’or.

Featuring Kani Kusruti, Divya Prabha, Chhaya Kadam and Hridhu Haroon in principal roles, the film, spotlights on Prabha and Anu nurses residents of Maximum City Mumbai trapped and troubled by their relationships. The two embark on road trip to a beach town where “the mystical forest becomes a space for their dreams to manifest.”

Incidentally, it is the first Indian film in 30 years to be screened in the main competition at Cannes since Malayalam film Swaham by eminent cinematographer-director Shaji N Karun in 1994.

Cannes seems to have a special affinity for the young and talented Indian film maker Payal Kapadia. She won the Golden Eye award for best documentary film at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival for A Night of Knowing Nothing her Afternoon Clouds was the only Indian film that was selected for the 70th Cannes Film Festival, in 2017.

The other Indian film basking under the Cannes arc light is Santosh the feature debut by British-Indian Sandhya Suri, in the Un Certain Regard section. A graduate in pure
mathematics, Sandhya received a scholarship to study documentary at The National Film Television School, which saw her documentary – I For India premiered at the World Competition Section of Sundance Film Festival.

Santosh, which finds its pride of place among the Cannes scroll, first germinated in 2016 when Sandhya was selected for both Sundance Screenwriters’ and Directors’ Lab with her first fiction feature. The eight year sojourn culminating in Cannes cinema amphitheatre for the crème la crème of film world to watch.

The film, which has Shahana Goswami reprising the title role, centres around the newly widowed Santosh who inherits her husband’s job as a police constable in the rural badlands of Northern India. When a girl’s body is found, she’s pulled into the investigation under the wing of charismatic feminist inspector Sharma.

What makes All We Imagine As Light & Santosh, even more significant and special, is the fact that they have been helmed by women film makers and keeping them august company is UK’s Andrea Arnold of euponymous American Honey film fame with her Bird, which revolves around Bailey raised by her single father, who sets out to seek attention and adventure as one one would expect of any teen on the cusp of adulthood.

Likewise, providing a proud Kannadiga moment, you have FTII student film Sunflowers Were The First Ones To Know by Chidananda S Naik picked to compete at in the La Cinef short film section at the film festival.

A medic from the Mysore Medical College’s Chidananda’s Sunflowers…. is a story of an elderly woman who steals the village’s rooster, which throws the community into disarray. To bring the rooster back, a prophecy is invoked, sending the old lady’s family into exile.

Among female directors in the competition section you have France’s Coralie Fargeat with Substance, a body horror flick featuring Demi Moore of Indecent Proposal, Disclosure & Striptease fame, Margaret Qualley and Dennis Quaid.

Upping the ante for competition among women is France’s Agathe Riedinger with her Wild Diamond (Diamant brut) which tells the tale of Liane, 19, who, zealously driven by her overarching aspirations for beauty and stardom, auditions for a reality “Miracle Island.”

Among the other notable films in the section to watch out include Brazilian film director Karim Ainouz’s Motel Destino which tracks the romance between a young man who rebels against social sytem which wants wants him dead as a result and a woman braving patriarchy against her own life.

The renowned American director Francis Ford Coppola’s sci-fi Megalopolis about an architect seeking to rebuild New York City as a utopia following a devastating disaster. The irrepressible King of Venereal Horror or the Baron of Blood – Canadian director David Cronenberg’s The Shrouds – centring around innovative businessman and grieving widower Karsh who builds a device to connect with the dead inside a burial shroud. Lithunian director Michel Hazanavicious’ animation flick La Plus Precieuse des Marchandises (The Most Precious of Cargoes) about a poor woodcutter and his wife, in war-torn times, wherein a baby girl, found and rescued by the couple, brings irrevocable change in their lives and those whose paths the child crosses.

The controversial Iranian film director Mohammad Rasoulof’s The Seed of the Sacred Fig which follows an investigating judge Iman grappling with paranoia amid political unrest in Tehran.

Italian director Paolo Sorrentino’s Parthenope,a fantasy drama about a woman who bears the name of her city. Is she a siren or a myth?., Russian film maker Kirill Serebrennikov’s Limonov: The Ballad of Eddie (Limonov: The Ballad) the outrageous story of Eduard Limonov, radical Soviet poet who became a political antihero in Russia, and Swedish director Magnus von Horn’s The Girl with the Needle (Pigen med nålen) about a young worker finds herself unemployed and pregnant, in Copenhagen of 1916.

Saudi Arabian director Tawfik Alzaidi’s Sarah, Bulgarian director Konstantin Bojanov’s Shameless, which is set in India, centring around Renuka, who after killing a cop begins a forbidden romance with the 17-year-old Devika, starring Mita Vashisth, The Kingdom (Le royaume) by Corsican film maker Julien Colonna, French actress turned director Laetitia Dosch’s Dog on Trial / Who Let The Dog Bite (Le procès du chien), Chinese director Hu Guan’s Black Dog (Gou zhen), Somali-Austrian director Mo Harawe’s The Village Next to Paradise, Greek-French director Ariane Labed’s September Says, French director Boris Lojkine’s L’histoire de Souleymane, Italian film maker Roberto Minervini’ The Damned, Zambian Rungano Nyoni’s On Becoming a Guinea Fowl, Japan’s Hiroshi Okuyama’s My Sunshine (Boku No Ohisama), Vietnam’s Minh Quy Truong’s Viet and Nam, and Norway’s Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel’s Armand, constitute the Un Certain Regard line up.

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S Viswanath is veteran Film Journalist / Critic & involved in various key capacities at many International Film Festivals circuits across the Globe also co-author of book ‘Random reflections: kaleidoscopic musings on Kannada cinema.