S Viswanath

Think La Cinef. Think FTII. Think India. This seems the new normal at one of Cannes Film Festival’s prestigious competition sections La Cinef. Since it birthed in 1998, as La Cinefoundation midwifed by French Film Critic Gilles Jacob (also responsible for Un Certain Regard selection & Caméra d’Or Award,) during its 27 years existence, has seen Indian student talents making significant mark, striking success every once a while.

Created under the aegis of Cannes Film Festival, La Cinefoundation’s mandate is to inspire and support the next generation of international filmmakers under La Cinef competition cosmos with express mandate of spotting talent, showcasing up-and-coming promising directors, which attracts over 2,000 films from schools from across the globe.

That handful of just 15 to 20 short and medium length films presented by film schools from all over the world, are meticulously curated and nominated for La Cinef’s four member jury tasked with awarding prizes to three best short films in competition, should bespeak for itself on the stringent standards set to be surpassed by the eventual competing shorts and their talented aspiring future filmmakers. The jury will award First Prize – Premier Prix (€15,000 grant), Second Prize – Deuxième Prix (€11,250), and Third Prize – Troisième Prix (€7,500).

It is no wonder than in the last two and half decades five short films from India and FTII have found their way into the fighting final list. The eventual winner takes home the rich spoils of a huge cash award besides branding, recognition and stamp of future filmmakers bestowed on the young filmmaker as he embarks upon his ambitious career sojourn thereon.

This year La Cinef scroll sees 14 live action and five animated shorts from among 2,750 shorts the selection committee received from film schools across the world. What is emboldening and encouraging is that a dozen of them are directed by young women practitioners. The shorts in contention represent 15 countries from four continents. Furthermore, according to Cannes Film Festival two schools were specially invited for the first time to participate in the prestigious talent scouting section: Hongik University (South Korea) and ISAMM (Tunisia).

Indian talents and shorts, which have tasted success in previous years, as late as 2024 when the 15 minute Kannada Film & Television Institute of India’s Diploma Film Sunflowers Were the First Ones to Know directed by Chidanand S Naik film picked the first prize, this time around has the 24 minute Punjabi film Parchave Masseah Rataan De (Shadows of the Moonless Nights) by the Ludhiana based young student Mehar Malhotra from FTII.

The short, which will compete alongside 14 live-action and five animated shorts chosen from over 2,750 global submissions, is inspired by the struggles of city workers. The film narrates the story of Rajan, a night-shift factory worker confronting the bitter realities of urban life while battling exhaustion and sleeplessness from his tiring work.

According to the filmmaker “the film reflects the invisible toll of sleepless urban labour.” Incidentally, Mehar’s own story surrealistically reflects her protagonist’s struggles, given that as an 18-year-old, the young girl who landed up in Mumbai – the Maya Nagari or Maximum City in search of work, found herself all alone, uprooted from her home and near ones, battling insomnia, depression and erosion of mental health given the erratic work schedules as the new migrant goes through the grind to make a meaningful living.

Elated at the Mehar’s selection, the India’s most coveted film and television training institute in India described as ‘Mecca’ of film education said it marks “the fifth FTII student film to be represented at La Cinef since 2017,” reaffirming “FTII’s continued presence on the globally respected cinematic platform.”

Rajan, is a weary night factory worker, enduring gruelling shifts continuously at a busy Pune warehouse, taping boxes while dodging his supervisor’s sharp whistle. Housed at his sister Anju’s small flat, comprising husband, daughter, and niece, he returns exhausted and unable to catch a wink of sleep due to the constant noise around, cooking, alarms, kids playing, which perpetually keep him stark awake.

With a volatile, noisy home life, Rajan takes recourse to drifting through sleepless nights in the City trying to catch some sleep that always seems just out of reach.

Taking a cue from his coworker he takes to alcohol to steal some sleep and ending up coming home drunk, leading to his censorious brother-in-law taking offense to it. To escape the caustic comments of his brother-in-law Rajan takes to wandering pre-dawn streets past the sleeping guards and the homeless, who metamorphically mirror his own state of insomnolence. The respite from his torpidity comes as a manna from heaven when he cuts his hand badly at work and he slumps on a hospital bench which turns as the sanctuary bringing him the rest he has most desired.

The other Indian films, besides the Kannada short Sunflowers Were The First To Know, which have had the fortune of taking a shy at the La Cinef honour includes Nehemich (2023) by Yudhajit Basu an alumnus of FTII, Ashmita Guha Neogi’s Cat Dog which won the 2020 La Cinef Premix Prix award. Incidentally, Payal Kapadia, another FTII alumnus, who won the 77th Cannes Film Festival’s Grand Prix Award for her film All We Imagine As Light in 2024, had previously had her short film Afternoon Clouds in the La Cinef competition in 2017. Another film from India, though not from FTII, but equally reputed Kolkata based institution Satyajit Ray Film & Television Institute’s A Doll Made Up Of Clay by Sahil Manoj Ingle featured in the La Cinef section at the 78th Festival de Cannes 2025.

Among the other 19 contenders in the La Cinef competition announced by the 79th Cannes Film Festival panel includes Laser Gata (Laser Cat) a 22 min short by the New York University student Lucas Acher.

The six minute Belgium short Photograph of an Insane Woman to Show the Condition of her hair by Arwen Aznab from LUCA School of Arts Brussels. The short revolves round a young woman with untameable hair walking down the street while men with full eyebrows, greasy hair and dirty mouths shout after her while her head starts to itch and swell.

The 20 minute Spanish film Tu, Yo Y La Vaca (Me, You and the Cow) by Aina Callejon from Escola Superior de Cinema & Audiovisuals de Catalunya Spanish film and audiovisual school. Martina, addicted to her phone, is forcibly taken by her father to a rehabilitation centre that practices an unusual therapy: healing through connection with cows. Far from Wi-Fi and close to the source of her pain, Martina will have to confront the pain she has been avoiding.

Pickled by Fanny Capu, is a nine minute short from UK’s National Film and Television School. The 8-minute 39-second stop-motion animation film explores a deeply personal story of family legacy, capturing the joy and overwhelming emotional weight that it can bring. “Pickled explores the emotional weight of what we inherit from those we love, and how honouring that legacy can sometimes feel overwhelming.” says the short creator.

A six minute Bird Rhapsody by Wonjung Choi from South Korea’s Hongik University. The experimental animated short follows a crowd of people endlessly climbing upward, each trying to seize their own “bird.” Initially, the bird seems to represent desire, success, and recognition, but as the story unfolds, we learn something that can never truly be held. After one final fall, in the emptiness that follows, one person finally encounters the bird within and chooses not to possess it, but to take flight instead.

The director-duo Noa Epars & Marvin Merkel’s 21 minute Swiss short Always Wanted to be God, Never wanted to be Good, students of Haute Ecole dart et de design de Genève – Geneva University of Art & Design (HEAD). The short is set amidst the summits of Swiss mountains, with Christian crosses standing tall. In cities, billboards displaying Bible verses occupy public space. In 2009, mountain guide Patrick Bussard made headlines sawing down a cross in Fribourg Alps and being severely punished by the courts for his blasphemous act.

Faculty of Dramatic Arts, University of Arts in Belgrade (FDU) student Tara Gajovic’s 15 minute short Preko Praga
(Over the Threshold), tells a cupid sagas of two teenagers who, just three months into dating, discover they are expecting a child. They lovebirds decide to keep the baby. However, wedding day, finds them overwhelmed by traditions and social expectations that begins to suffocate them.

The Konrad Wolf Film University of Babelsberg, Germany, students Roozbeh Gezerseh & Soraya Shamsi’s 12 minute
short Growing Stones, Flying Papers. New York University Reuben Hamlynn’s 19 minute short Sunday’s Children, is about how desperate to become a father, a man spends a weekend falling for a woman who believes God has warned her never to have children.

The Tunisian academy – SAMM Higher Institute of Arts and Multimedia, Manouba student Youssef Handouse’s 21 minute short Somewhere I Belong, is about the protagonist is forced to confront the painful truth: his home is no longer where he left it, and his belonging is guaranteed neither by blood nor by memory. He must decide whether he wants to reclaim the life he thought he had missed out on or finally let it go.

Columbia University student Nadine Misong Jin’s 17 minute short Silent Voices, speaks of how Kaya resents her grandmother’s cruelty towards her mother when the old lady returns home from the nursing home.

The Polish National Film School student Jakub Krzyszpin’s 7 minute Trakcje (Axles) is an animated short film which follows an impatient man on a creaking, speeding train who loses his ticket. He enters a spiral of obsessive searching, during which the deforming space around him drags him into a disturbing, absurd journey.

La Fémis – France’s film and television school student Julius Lagoutte Larsen’s 25 minute short Aldrig Nok (Never Enough).

USC Cinematic Arts – USA student Lenti Liang’s 15 minute short Tian de Mi (Our Secrets), revolving around teenage girl Tian who, in early spring of Guangzhou, senses a quiet awakening of desire. Yet, a real-world encounter soon drifts far from her fantasies, leaving her in a nebulous state of confusion.

Yasmin Najjar’s graduation film from Master’s programme in film directing at the ELO Film School of Aalto University Finland is her 24 minute short TJ28 (28 Days Left), which follows a Finnish-Palestinian woman, Amani Lillak, completing her voluntary military service in the Finnish Army’s medical corps. During a final combat exercise, she learns about the crisis in her father’s homeland. The intensity of the combat exercise pushes internal tensions within medical corps to their breaking point with Lillak trying to turn her back on both conflicts and be free for just a moment. The filmmaker herself plays the protagonist which is based on her own experiences during her voluntary military service in the Finnish Defence Forces in 2021.

Another short from UK’s National Film and Television School the 22 minute Left Behind, Still Standing (Kaysar Kasim) by Vida Skerk, follows Morana, an immigrant environmental scientist sent to oversee the dismantling of a steel factory. As she struggles with the uncertainty of her own future, she discovers that at night the factory mysteriously comes back to life, run by the “ghosts” of its former workers.

The film explores themes of displacement, labour and belonging. Both Morana and the workers exist in a state of transition, caught between staying and disappearing. The factory becomes a space where memory and identity continue to exist, even as the world moves on.

The Escola Superior de Teatro e Cinema (The Polytechnic University of Lisbon) student Clara Vieera’s 18 minute short Onde Nascem Os Pirilampos (Where Fireflies Sparkle) follows a group of teenagers who gather for a camping trip. While two of them try to define their romantic relationship, they are surprised by a swarm of fireflies that guide them into the depths of the forest

Nihon University College of Art – Japan student Wong Chau-Hong’s 16 minute short film Will It Rain Again Today form the compendium of 19 films in fray for the La Cinef awards. The 2026 La Cinef prizes will be given away by the at a ceremony in the Bunuel Theatre on May 21, followed by the screening of the awarded films.

Besides this, in the short films competition, you have 10 short films being presented from among 3,184 films received from productions and co-productions houses across 136 countries. The Short Film Palme d’or will be awarded on Saturday, May 23rd, during the closing awards ceremony of the 79th Festival de Cannes.

The selected shorts which uniformly run into 15 minutes each except one which is a minute less, are: FRESH CUT by Hadrien BELS, THE LAST SPRING by Mathilde BEDOUET, SISTERS’ SWIM by Lola DEGOVE, THE END by Niki LINDROTH VON BAHR, PARA LOS CONTRINCANTES (For the Opponents) by Federico LUIS, PELOTON TRUENO (Thunder Platoon) by Theo MONTOYA, GIẤC MƠ LÀ ỐC SÊN (The Dream is a Snail) by Thien AN NGUYEN, ALGUMAS COISAS QUE ACONTECEM AO LADO DE UM RIO (A Few Things Happening by a River) by Daniel SOARES, SPIRITUS SANCTUS by Michal TOCZEK and NIKO NIŠTA NIJE REKAO (Nobody Said Anything) by Tamara TODOROVIĆ.