‘Salaam Bombay,’ ‘The Lunchbox,’ ‘Imagine the Light’: Indian films that have made us proud at the Cannes Film Festival over the years

Filmmaker Payal Kapadia made history by becoming the first Indian director to win the Grand Prix at the 77th Cannes Film Festival with her film All We Imagine As Light, which received an eight-minute standing ovation at the festival. The film stars Kani Kusruti, Divya Prabha and Chhaya Kadam. It took three decades for an Indian film to be screened and win this prestigious award at Cannes. Before an independent film hits the stage of this prestigious festival with a three-decade gap, let’s take a look at the various award-winning films so far.

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Chetan Anand’s masterpiece Neecha Nagar won the Palme d’Or, the highest award at the Cannes Film Festival in 1946. The film was inspired by Hayatullah Ansari’s short story of the same name and highlights the disparity between the rich and the poor in Indian society.

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Directed by Bimal Roy, Do Bigha Zameen won the prestigious Prix Internationale at the 1953 festival. It stars Nirupa Roy and Balraj Sahani in the lead roles. It is based on Rabindranath Tagore’s Bengali poem Dui Bigha Jomi. It is considered one of the masterpieces of early Indian parallel cinema.

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Directed by Prakash Arora and produced by Raj Kapoor, Boot Polish won a special award for child actor Naaz at the Cannes Film Festival in 1955. It also stars Ratan Kumar and David in important roles. It is a moving story about the lives of two slum boys.

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Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali won the Palme d’Or for Best Human Document in 1956. Ray’s debut film was produced by the state government of West Bengal. It was an adaptation of a Bengali novel by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay and stars Subir Banerjee, Kanu Banerjee, Karuna Banerjee, Uma Dasgupta, Pinaki Sengupta and Chunivala Devi in ​​leading roles.

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Directed by Mrinal Sen, Kharij is based on a novel by Ramapada Choudhury and won the Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1983. The hit film tells the story of a middle-class family and their struggle to appease their dead servant father.

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Mira Nair’s crossover film Salaam Bombay won both the Camera d’Or and the Audience Award at the Cannes Film Festival in 1988. It was Nair’s first feature film. The film depicts the lives of children living in the slums of Bombay. The film stars Shafiq Saeed, Raghubir Yadav, Anita Kanwar, Nana Patekar, Hansa Vitthal and Chanda Sharma in key roles.

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The Malayalam film Piravii, directed by Shaji N Karun, won a special award in the Camera d’Or category at the Cannes Film Festival in 1989. It stars Premji, Archana and Lakshmi Krishnamurthy. The film is based on the life of Professor TV Eachala Warrier, whose son was killed in police custody during the 1976 National Emergency.

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Murali Nair’s Malayalam film “Marana Simhasanam” was selected for the Cannes Film Festival after a decade in which no Indian films had been shown there, where it was screened in the “Un Certain Regard” section and won the Camera d’Or at the 1999 festival.

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The Lunchbox, directed by Ritesh Batra, was screened at the Cannes Film Festival’s Critics’ Week in 2013 and later won the Grand L’Air d’Or. The film stars Nimrat Kaur, Irrfan Khan and Nawazuddin Siddiqui. It was nominated for Best Non-English Language Film at the 2015 BAFTAs.

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