festival Five films from India make their presence felt at the ongoing Cannes Film Festival. Read on to know the different sections in which they feature and why it matters
All eyes are on the Indian contingent at the ongoing Cannes Film Festival. We are not talking about Aishwarya Rai, Sonam Kapoor, Arjun Rampal, Mehr Jessia and other stars who will make their presence felt at the festival in the next few days on behalf of the respective brands they endorse. This is one of the best outing for Indian cinema at Cannes with five films being screened in ‘sections' that matter and an unfinished project is featured in the L'Atelier section. Here's a ready reckoner on the different sections.
Miss Lovely
Director: Ashim Ahluwalia
Section: ‘Un Certain Regard'.
Cast: Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Anil George and Niharika Singh
Plot: The film takes you back to the mid-80s, a time when C-grade horror and sleaze had a following of its own. Two brothers who make these films for money, fall in love with a struggling actress.
What next: Scheduled to release in India this June, Miss Lovely was also screened at the Toronto and Berlin film festivals earlier.
Peddlers
Director: Vasan Bala
Section: Critics Week
Cast: Gulshan Devaiah, Siddharth Menon, Nimrat Kaur and Kriti Malhotra
Plot: The film shows Mumbai as a ghost town and pitches an intelligence office with the Narcotics Control Bureau against a terminally ill Bangladeshi immigrant and a young boy who breaks free from his home only to be caught in the Mumbai underbelly.
What next: Expect Peddlers to be screened in a few more international film festivals before its release in India later this year.
Gangs of Wasseypur 1 and 2
Director: Anurag Kashyap
Section: Director's Fortnight
Cast: Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Manoj Bajpai, Tigmanshu Dhulia and others
Plot: The five and a half hour film will be screened in two parts. Anurag Kashyap tells the story of coal mafia through this action-packed venture which also has 25 songs.
What next: GoW is scheduled to release in India on June 22.
Kalpana (1948)
Director: Uday Shankar
Section: Cannes Classics
Cast: Uday Shankar, Amala Shankar and Padmini
Plot: A young dancer's dreams of setting up his own dance school. Kalpana was only film to be directed by Uday Shankar, who was assisted by Guru Dutt. Padmini made her Hindi debut through this film.
What next: Restored by a lab in Bologna, Italy, with the funding of Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Foundation, Kalpana was screened in Cannes Classics. Hopefully, this will open a new window for many more of our old classics to be restored.
The Untold Tale
Director: Shivajee Chandrabhushan
Section: L'Atelier
Plot: The first Indian project to be screened in this section of Cannes, The Untold Tale , written by Triparna Banerjee, tells the story of a young puppeteer's journey to India from Spain.
What next: The opportunity will enable Shivajee Chandrabhushan and Triparna Banerjee to meet filmmakers and international financiers and take the project forward.
Ishaqzaade
Director: Habib Faisal
Cast: Arjun Kapoor and Parineeti Chopra
Section: Market
It is inappropriate to say that Ishaqzaade was ‘selected' for screening at Cannes. Any filmmaker/distribution house can screen their project in the Market section for a fee. In recent years, films such as Devdas and Raavan were screened in this non-competitive section.
compiled by sangeetha devi dundoo
