- Title: First Indian film in 30 years brings women's issues to Cannes
- Date: 24th May 2024
- Summary: CANNES, FRANCE (MAY 23, 2024) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE)(English) DIRECTOR PAYAL KAPADIA, SAYING: "I wanted to have one day where we could be away from the city and work. Almost like a day off. And when you take a day off and when you work a really hectic job, you don’t really…. especially, in a city like Mumbai, where you take two hours to commute everyday, you don’t really ha
- Embargoed: 7th June 2024 17:04
- Keywords: First Indian film in 30 years brings women's issues to Cannes
- Location: CANNES, FRANCE / VARIOUS FILM LOCATIONS
- City: CANNES, FRANCE / VARIOUS FILM LOCATIONS
- Country: Various
- Topics: Arts/Culture/Entertainment,Film
- Reuters ID: LVA004483322052024RP1
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: The first Indian film to compete in the Cannes Film Festival for 30 years brings women’s issues in India to international screens.
Payal Kapadia’s "All We Imagine As Light" tells the story of two women sharing an apartment, their lives and their challenges in a male-dominated society.
Kapadia is the first woman from India to have been nominated in the category and this is her first feature film, but as India goes to the polls in the general elections, and women’s issues gain momentum, all eyes are on the film from a country where women are all too often in the headlines as victims of violence and inequality.
The two female protagonists explore together the meaning of independence, financial freedom, sexual desires and female friendships in a country where such topics are often taboo.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's BJP is running a campaign focused on women's welfare, including cash handouts and domestic benefits but his government has a mixed record in tackling the rate of crime against women - the latest data from the National Crime Records Bureau shows that on average 88 women are raped in India every day.
Director Kapadia said, however, that while the film features the particular challenges faced by women in India, she feels that the message of how they deal with those challenges and the development of female friendships transcend India's borders and apply to women everywhere.
“I don’t specifically think it’s about women in India, it’s a film about friendship and I think that’s a universal thing," she told Reuters at the festival in Cannes. "Whether it’s India or anywhere else. Every woman suffers under the binds of patriarchy, and that sort of comes in the way of female friendships - and this was one of the core themes of my film.”
The cast and crew of the film were definitely enjoying the limelight, dancing their way along the red carpet at the Palais, where the film premiered on Thursday evening (May 23).
The film is an Indian nomination in the competition section 30 years after Santosh Sivan’s "Swaham" in 1994.
Kapadia, whose documentary "A Night of Knowing Nothing" had earlier won an award at the festival, is competing against filmmakers like Francis Ford Coppola and Jia Zhang-Ke.
(Production: Christian Levaux, Fedja Grulovic, Alicia Powell, Rupali Shukla) - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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