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ShareIndia has at least seven films selected for the Cannes Film Festival that plays from May 16-27 this year. These include Mani Ratnam's 'Guru' (Hindi), Vinay Subramaniam and Mridul Toolsidass' 'Missed Call' (Hindi/English), Rituparno Ghosh's 'Dosar'(Bengali), G Vasanta Balan's 'Veyil' (Tamil), Rajkumar Hirani's 'Lage Raho Munnabhai', D Bijukumar's 'Saira' (Malayalam) and Bhavna Talwar's 'Dharm' (Hindi).
The films have been curated by Serge Sobczynski for a section called Tous les cinemas du monde (All the cinemas of the world). This is an independent section, not part of the festival's official selection. The festival is yet to announce its official selection at the time of going to press.
Not everybody who makes a film in his '20s manages to hit paydirt at Cannes with his debut like Vinay Subramaniam, just 28, co-director of Missed Call. "Mridul and I first discussed the idea over chai in a Mahalaxmi shack. We just wanted it to get to theatres here, but now it seems on a journey of its own, with screenings at Cannes and the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles." 'Missed Call' is about a loner who commits suicide, without realising that he had friends all along.
'Saira' is the debut film of Bijukumar, which has a fearless woman journalist tackle fundamentalism. He says, "Unfortunately, I have still not been able to get a distributor or government support because it is not a mainstream film."
For Vasanta Balan, director of 'Veyil', the sweet fruit of Cannes follows the bitter harvest of failure. "My first film Album flopped and I saw myself as a failure. 'Veyil' is a biography of failure,a story of two brothers drawn from my personal experiences. When I borrowed DVDs and saw labels saying they were selected for Cannes, I used to envy the directors. It's lovely to earn that label myself."
