Did You Know: India Breaks 30-Year-Old Hiatus As 'All We Imagine As Light' Bags Grand Prix Honor At Cannes 2024

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New Delhi: History was created as Payal Kapadia's 'All We Imagine As Light' won at the prestigious Grand Prix at the 77th Cannes Film Festival. Payal was present with the cast including Kani Kusruti, Divya Prabha and Chhaya Kadam at the awards ceremony held on the last day of the Cannes 2024 festival. But did you know, this is not the first time India has won this title!

The first iteration of the Cannes Film Festival, planned for 1939, was scuppered when Germany invaded Poland to trigger the start of World War II. Later when the festival finally got off the ground in 1946, Indian cinema came out swinging. In the spirit of post-war peace and reconciliation, the competition jury handed the top prize, then the Grand Prix, to films from 11 of the 18 countries represented that year, including India. 

Chetan Anand’s social-realist drama Neecha Nagar won the Grand Prix and, for a decade at least, the country was a regular fixture in Competition. The film that put India on the map in Cannes was the debut feature by director Satyajit Ray, whose film Pather Panchali won the one-off honor of Best Human Document. 

India has finally broken its 30-year hiatus with Mumbai-based filmmaker Payal Kapadia’s ambitious fiction feature debut All We Imagine As Light. Shot over 25 late summer days in Mumbai, followed by an extra 15 in the rainy western port town of Ratnagiri, the Malayalam-Hindi language feature tells the story of two young women — Prabha, a nurse from Mumbai, and Anu, her roommate. The film bagged the award, which is the second-most prestigious prize of the festival after the Palme d'Or, during the closing ceremony of the 77th edition.

The main competition jury was chaired by filmmaker Greta Gerwig and also included Spanish director Juan Antonio Bayona, Turkish actor-screenwriter Ebru Ceylan, Italian actor Pierfrancesco Favino, American actor Lily Gladstone, Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda, Lebanese actor-director Nadine Labaki and French stars Eva Green and French actor Omar Sy.