Maisam Ali and Payal Kapadia were classmates at the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune, studying direction half-a-decade ago in the middle of student protests. Kapadia would go on to make a movie set in the backdrop of the student protests witnessed in India at the turn of the last decade. Ali has just completed his own, about a community’s discomfort with the return of one of its people, with the snow peaks of Ladakh in the background.

Both FTII alumni will screen their new movies at the 77th Cannes Film Festival beginning on May 14, Kapadia in the prestigious competition section and Ali in a parallel selection run by French filmmakers called ACID (Association for the Diffusion of Independent Cinema). Kapadia’s All We Imagine As Light, a Hindi-Malayalam language feature about two Kerala nurses working in a Mumbai hospital, will create history as the first Indian movie vying for the Palme d’Or, the Cannes top prize, in three decades. Ali, whose Ladakhi and Hindi language film Beqayaam (In Retreat) premieres in the ACID section, is just glad that two FTII batchmates are together at the most influential film festival in the world in the same year.

“This year, there are three films made by former FTII students in Cannes representing India,” say Ali, referring to another film institute alumnus, Chidananda S Naik, who is selected in the film schools competition in Cannes this year for his end-of-course Kannada short film, Suryakanthihooge Modhalugothagidhu (Sunflowers Were The First To Know). “Payal created history. It is the first time in 30 years an Indian film is in competition in Cannes. It is a matter of great pride for India,” he adds.

As two of the four films in Cannes official selection this year are made by FTII alumni and another is part of a parallel programme, the pride of being former students of the state-run FTII, Pune is palpable among the directors of the three Indian entries at the French Riviera festival running from May 14 to 25. The Cannes film festival this year has turned to be the story of how the FTII, Pune, one of the most reputed film schools in the world, has returned to the high table of global cinema where its former students and teachers were regulars until a few decades ago.

Institution of repute

“The Pune film institute has been an important national institution in moulding future filmmakers of the country,” says Malayalam director Shaji N Karun, an FTII alumnus and the last Indian to screen a film in the Cannes competition in 1994. Karun’s Swaham (My Own), which competed in the year US director Quentin Tarantino won the Palme d’Or for his debut film, Pulp Fiction, had followed his own debut film, Piravi, which won the Camera d’Or Special Mention in Cannes in 1989. 

“The film institute campus felt like a magical place,” says Ali, who graduated in direction from FTII, Pune, in 2018. “Before I appeared for the FTII entrance exam, I sent a friend to the campus for a recce,” laughs Ali. “He came back and told me it was a strange place. He had seen one person wearing the same T-shirt for six days.”

“On the campus, we were watching and discussing movies day and night. It is a dream place, a closely-knit community, like the hidden beach where Leonardo DiCaprio’s character Richard goes to in British director Danny Boyle’s 2000 film, The Beach,” says Ali, whose diploma film, Far in Night, was about a train journey by a group of school football players going to play a match. “The life in FTII was one of the strange experiences of my life.”

Building a community

The collective work of a community and camaraderie are also part of all the three films by FTII alumni in Cannes this year in which various elements of production from cinematography to editing are done by the directors’ batchmates. Kapadia’s All We Imagine As Light is shot by FTII alumnus Ranabir Das, who was also the cinematographer of her previous film, A Night of Knowing Nothing, part of the Directors’ Fortnight selection in Cannes two years ago. Ali credits his batchmates Niladri Shekhar Roy for sound design, mixing of his film and Siddhesh Kandalgaonkar for art direction. Another FTII alumnus, Thanikachalam SA, a cinematography graduate, is a co-producer of Beqayaam.

“Getting admission to FTII is a long and tough process. Thousands apply, but only a few get it,” says Naik, the second FTII alumnus to compete in Cannes festival’s La Cinef section for film schools around the world in two years. Marathi short film Nehemich, directed by Yudhajit Basu, was the FTII entry in La Cinef last year. “Once you are on the campus, there is a huge history which shapes you for the endless possibilities of cinema,” adds Naik, who left his job as a doctor in a Mysore hospital to pursue his dream of becoming a filmmaker. “At any given time, someone is making a movie on the campus. Even in the canteen people are talking about films. There is a passion for cinema.”

Naik, whose Kannada short film, Sunflowers Were The First To Know, is inspired by a folk tale of the Banjara community to which he belongs, considers the FTII course as a critical part of a filmmaker’s journey. “We learn the art and craft on the campus before we are sent out to the world,” he says. “The film institute is a temple of learning. It was built around the erstwhile Prabhat Studios. VK Murthy, the legendary cinematographer of such acclaimed films as Pyaasa, Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam and Kaagaz Ke Phool was shooting in this place. There is something sacred about FTII. Major filmmakers learned here and cinema legends created the space for us,” he explains.

Founded in 1960, FTII, Pune quickly became the ground for a new wave in Indian cinema long before another state-run film institute, the Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute, Kolkata, was added in 1995. “The new wave in the ’70s began with FTII graduates like John Abraham, Mani Kaul, Adoor Gopalakrishnan and others. They pioneered a new language of Indian cinema,” says Basu, whose diploma film, Nehemich, part of film school competition in Cannes last year, explored the age-old practice of banishing menstruating women to dingy mud huts in villages. The new wave filmmakers were soon screening their films in festivals like Cannes, a regularity missing in the past few decades. “The film institute also helped Indian cinema embrace the country’s many languages and cultures. Students who came to the campus from different states were eager to tell stories in their cultures and languages. The atmosphere on the campus encouraged that,” says Basu, who is currently shooting his first feature film in West Bengal. “The film institute alumni are selected to Cannes regularly today. As an alumnus, I feel proud of my alma mater.” 

India @Cannes24

  • All We Imagine As Light by Payal Kapadia (Competition)
  • Santosh by Sandhya Suri (Un Certain Regard)
  • Sunflowers Were The First To Know by Chidanand S Naik (La Cinef)
  • Maya: The Birth of a Superhero by Poulomi Basu, CJ Clarke (Immersive Competition)
  • Manthan by Shyam Benegal (Cannes Classics)
  • Sister Midnight by Karan Kandhari (Directors’ Fortnight)
  • In Retreat by Maisam Ali (ACID)

Movies to watch out for

  • Megalopolis by Francis Ford Coppola is the acclaimed American filmmaker’s first film in over a decade about a disaster wiping out a major US city
  • The Apprentice by Iranian-Danish filmmaker Ali Abbasi explores the rise of Donald Trump as a real estate tycoon
  • Bird by British filmmaker Andrea Arnold tells the story of a single father and his two young sons living in a squat
  • The Shrouds by Canadian director David Cronenberg, starring Diane Kruger and Vincent Kassel, is described as a horror film about a widower developing a device to connect with his dead wife 
  • Caught by the Tides by Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhangke is a work of two decades, marking his return to Cannes after his 2018 film, Ash is Purest White 
  • Kinds of Kindness by Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos shows the return of Emma Stone after her Oscar-winning performance in his previous film, Poor Things
  • Limonov: The Ballad by Russian filmmaker Kirill Serebrennikov is about the life of dissident Russian political Eduard Limonov, the founder of National Bolshevik Party
  • The Shameless by Bulgarian filmmaker Konstanin Bojanov, shot partially in Nepal, probes the deep patriarchal prejudices in the Indian society in the story of a young woman accused of killing a policeman in a Delhi brothel
  • An Ordinary Case by French director Daniel Auteuil tells the story of a disillusioned lawyer defending a man charged with killing his wife
  • I, the Executioner by South Korean director Ryoo Seung-wan is the sequel to his 2015 action thriller, Veteran, the story of detective Seo Do-chul 
  • Lula by American filmmakers Oliver Stone and Rob Wilson is a documentary on the Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s third term in power that was preceded by a jail term
  • Ernest Cole, Lost and Found by Raoul Peck is a documentary on the life and works of the South African photographer who filmed apartheid in his home country and racism in America
  • Meeting With Pol Pot by Cambodian director Rithy Panh revisits the horrors of genocide by the Khmer Rouge in the late ’70s