Move over, red carpet. Indian cinema is back at Cannes, says Anupama Chopra

Through these years, Indian cinema was largely relegated to supporting-artist status. Last year, the biggest noise was created by Anurag Kashyap’s Kennedy, a noir thriller that was selected for a midnight screening. The film has yet to be released in India.

This year is already a game-changer. After three decades, an Indian film has been selected in the main competition section. Payal Kapadia’s debut feature, All We Imagine as Light, is a contender for the festival’s most coveted award, the Palme d’Or.

Her film, about a nurse who receives an unexpected gift from a husband she hasn’t spoken to in years, will be competing against cinema legends, including Francis Ford Coppola’s sci-fi drama Megalopolis; David Cronenberg’s The Shrouds, a horror film about one man’s mission to connect with the dead; and Paul Schrader’s Oh, Canada, in which a famed, terminally ill documentary filmmaker gives one last interview to a former student.

Payal’s selection feels personal, because I first went to the festival in 1999 and have been waiting to cheer for India in the main competition ever since.

The festival’s second-most-prestigious section, Un Certain Regard, also features Indian talent. British-Indian writer-director Sandhya Suri’s feature debut Santosh has made the cut. The film stars Shahana Goswami as a newly widowed woman who inherits her husband’s job as a police constable in rural India. Sandhya’s competition includes Bulgarian-American director Konstantin Bojanov’s The Shameless, featuring Mita Vashisht and Tanmay Dhanania, in a story about a violent world of killing and sex work, in which two women unexpectedly fall in love.

This year, there were 2,263 submissions to La Cinef, the section for film-school projects. Only 18 were selected, including Film and Television Institute of India graduate Chidananda S Naik’s Sunflowers Were the First Ones to Know. Based on folklore, the 16-minute short film is about what happens to a village when the sun refuses to rise one day.

In the ACID sidebar (named for the Association for the Diffusion of Independent Cinema), we have In Retreat by Ladakhi filmmaker Maisam Ali. This is the first Indian film to be programmed at ACID since the sidebar was launched in 1992. The other sidebar, Directors’ Fortnight, includes Sister Midnight by the Indian filmmaker Karan Kandhari. The poster, which shows Radhika Apte with a large bandage across her nose, is startling enough to make me get in line. (The film is about a newlywed woman, trapped in a violent life in a Mumbai slum, who develops a thirst for vengeance.)

The cherry on the cake is legendary director-cinematographer Santosh Sivan receiving the Pierre Angénieux Tribute. Each year, in honour of the late inventor, engineer and optical manufacturer, a great director of photography is awarded. Santosh is the first Indian to receive the tribute. He is in good company – earlier recipients include Roger Deakins and Christopher Doyle.

I’m excited for India. For a ground report, tune in to my next column, on June 2.

(To reach Anupama Chopra with feedback, email feedbackforanu@gmail.com)