Payal Kapadia and Sandhya Suri
| Photo Credit: MUBI-YouTube/Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art
Indian directors Payal Kapadia and Sandhya Suri are set to showcase their films at the the upcoming Cannes Film Festival 2024 – the only two features from India at the iconic French film festival this year.
Following her success at Cannes in the previous year with the documentary A Night of Knowing Nothing, Kapadia brings her fiction debut, All We Imagine as Light, to the festival and will screen In Competition. A co-production between India and France, the film tells the story of two nurses from Kerala who work in a nursing home in Mumbai.
Sandhya Suri presents her narrative feature debut, Santosh, a character-driven neo-noir set in the hinterlands of Northern India, that will screen Un Certain Regard at this year’s ceremony. Backed by international producers such as Good Chaos in the UK and Haut et Court in France, the film features a cast led by Shahana Goswami.
Both directors represent the growing recognition of Indian cinema on the global stage, with their films receiving support British Film Institute, BBC Film, and ZDF/ARTE.
The Cannes film lineup was unveiled by Cannes Film Festival chief Thierry Fremaux and president Iris Knobloch at the UGC Normandie theater in Paris. Fremaux remarked on Indian cinema’s growing importance at Cannes saying, “Historically China and India are an important market for film… they are making a marked comeback to Cannes”.
Last year at Cannes, Anurag Kashyap’s Kennedy starring Rahul Bhat, Sunny Leone and Abhilash Thapliyal was selected for the Midnight Screenings’ Section of the festival. Kanu Behl’s Agra also debuted in the Director’s Fortnight Section at the 76th Cannes ceremony.
Jutstine Triet’s Oscar-winning Anatomy of a Fallwent on to win the Cannes Palme D’or last year.
