India Cannes do it?

In the past decade, Asian cinema’s international appeal has only surged. At the 62nd Cannes Film Festival which starts today, out of 20 films vying for top honours at the Palme d’Or (Golden Palm) — the highest prize awarded to competing films — six are by Asian film-makers. However, what’s surprising is that no Indian feature figures on this list. And this has been the trend over the years. The Indian presence has only been restricted to the jury. So though we can boast of having Sharmila Tagore as one of the judges this year, and Aishwarya Rai-Bachchan and Nandita Das in earlier years, we can’t say much about our cinematic presence.

Film-maker Ravi Chopra feels Indian film-makers are not ‘serious’ enough. He says, “We are pretty happy with the way things are. We are not that serious about a festival like Cannes, which is considered a prestigious platform by other nations to showcase their efforts.”

Mangesh Hadalwale, who made the critically-acclaimed Marathi movie Tingya, blames the system. “In India, the name of the director takes a backseat. Stars rule the filmdom. Everything is tweaked according to the whims of the stars. In such a scenario, films are bound to fall flat when exposed to a larger audience.” So then, what is the remedy? Chopra feels Cannes must be at the ‘forefront’ in our scheme of things and not at the ‘back of our minds’.

His thoughts are echoed by film-maker Sriram Raghavan. “For the past few years, countries like China, Japan and Korea have managed to get a global audience for the kind of films they believe in and make. Our mainstream Hindi cinema caters to a different kind of audience, very unlike the crowd at Cannes. We should make an effort to make movies which will appeal to a wider audience.”

Did you know?
In 2008, Dev Anand’s 1965 classic Guide and Tamil actor Ajith-starrer Billa were showcased as a part of Cannes Classic.