Cannes 2024: Once penalised by FTII with FIR for leading historic protest, filmmaker Payal Kapadia wins Grand Prix, bringing glory to alma mater, country

CHENNAI: Filmmaker Payal Kapadia who won the Grand Prix at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival for her critically acclaimed “All We Imagine as Light” once faced punitive action for leading a long, one-of-a-kind protest at her alma mater, the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII).

During her time as a student at the Pune-based FTII in 2015, Kapadia had led a four-month-long protest against the appointment of actor-politician Gajendra Chauhan, who has starred in B-grade film roles and is best-known for playing Yudhishthir in "Mahabharat", as the institute’s chairman. FTII students held a record protest for 139 days from June to October 2015 and boycotted classes. Questioning what they called a "politically-motivated decision", in view of Chauhan's "affiliation" with the ruling BJP, the protesting students had claimed that he lacked the vision and stature that past FTII governing council chairmen like Girish Karnad, U.R. Ananthamurthy, Shyam Benegal, Adoor Gopalakrishnan, and Mahesh Bhatt, had. Chauhan’s tenure had ended on March 3 that year and the government did not extend it.

Left-wing students’ organisations like the All India Students’ Association (AISA), students of the Satyajit Ray Film Institute and the Jawaharlal Nehru University as well as filmmaker Anand Patwardhan and academic-politician Yogendra Yadav had backed the striking students.

On August 5, 2015, as the protests raged across campus, Prashant Pathrabe, the then-director of FTII, had issued an order asking the 2008-batch students to leave the campus hostel and presented a notice stating that their film projects were to be assessed, majority of which were incomplete. The students then confronted Pathrabe in his office challenging his order, and formed a human chain, and held him captive, demanding he clarify the orders. A midnight crackdown by the Pune Police ensued on campus and over 20 students including Kapadia were chargesheeted. The administration then revoked the scholarships of Kapadia and seven other students, citing "indiscipline", and debarred them from participating in a foreign exchange programme that would have enabled them to participate in international film festivals.

However, in May 2017, the same institute that imposed punitive action against her for “indiscipline” decided to support Kapadia after her 13-minute short film "Afternoon Clouds" (2017) was selected in the 16-film shortlist of the Cinefondation student film section of the Cannes Film Festival. The FTII offered to give her a letter of support and pay her travel expenses. The film told the tale of a 60-year-old woman and her migrant Nepali domestic help living alone in an apartment, which Kapadia said was partly influenced by her grandmother’s story. She was the only FTII student whose film had gone to Cannes. She had made the film as part of a studio exercise while studying at the pre-eminent film school.

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Speaking to Hindustan Times, FTII’s then-director Bhupendra Kainthola said they decided to support Kapadia after they “observed her being disciplined” on the campus. He told HT, “Our decision to support students or deny them scholarship previously was based on how their conduct has been on the campus. Few days after the protest got over, many students came to me and said they never realised that their past actions will haunt them through their life. Some of them even cried and regretted their actions.”

Meanwhile, in 2021, another work of Kapadia's was shown at the prestigious gala on the French riviera, this time going on to win a coveted prize. “A Night of Knowing Nothing”, an epistolary romance about a university student writing letters to her estranged lover, while he is away, had premiered at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival’s Director’s Fortnight side-bar where it won the Oeil d’or (Golden Eye) award for best documentary. The 97-minute experiment weaves in archival footage of a series of student-led agitations from the ones against Dalit PhD scholar Rohit Vemula’s suicide to anti-Citizenship Amendment (Act) protests as well as the FTII’s own students-led protests against Gajendra Chauhan’s appointment as its chairman. The film is narrated by a fictional female FTII student character.

The unrelenting political voice of the filmmaker shone through during her speech after she accepted the Grand Prix at Cannes for her feature directorial debut “All We Imagine as Light”. She called the win “a triumph for the artist, the student, the political voice, the few who continue to stand up and persevere with their art in an atmosphere that has demonstrated time and time again that it has no patience for it.”

“All We Imagine as Light” which was screened at Cannes on Thursday night has received glowing reviews in the international press and already registered its name in the history books after it became the first Indian film in 30 years and the first ever by an Indian female director to be showcased in the main competition. The Malayalam-Marathi-Hindi language film is an India-France-Netherlands-Luxembourg co-production.

The screening of the film and its cast members Kani Kusruti, Divya Prabha, Chhaya Kadam and Hridhu Haroon received an eight-minute standing ovation from the audience members. “All We Imagine as Light”, a Malayalam-Hindi feature, is about Prabha, a nurse, who receives an unexpected gift from her long-estranged husband that throws her life into disarray. Her younger roommate, Anu, tries in vain to find a private spot in the big city to be alone with her boyfriend. One day the two nurses go on a road trip to a beach town where the mystical forest becomes a space for their dreams to manifest, according to the plotline.

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Some of Kapadia’s other works include "The Last Mango Before the Monsoon", a nineteen-minute film that premiered at the Oberhausen International Short Film Festival in 2015, where it won the FIPRESCI prize and the Special Jury Prize. The film's description reads thus: “Two technicians walk through a forest, setting up cameras to document animal activities in the night. A woman has moved away from a forest a long time ago. She yearns for her dead husband who is also the forest. The film examines a sense of loss amongst people who long for nature.”

Kapadia's “And What Is the Summer Saying” (2018), a largely black and white documentary set in Kondwall village in Maharashtra’s Sahyadri hills was screened at the Berlin Film Festival.

Payal Kapadia, who was born in Mumbai in 1986, is the daughter of renowned artist Nalini Malani, widely considered the pioneer of video art in India. She attended the Rishi Valley School boarding school in Andhra Pradesh. She received her Bachelor's degree in economics from St. Xavier's College, Mumbai and completed a one-year Master's degree from Sophia College in the city.

Kapadia was not the only talent from FTII to shine at Cannes this year. FTII student Chidanand S Naik’s “Sunflowers Were the First Ones to Know” won the top award in the student film category while Maisam Ali’s “In Retreat” was selected to be screened at the festival. Ali is Kapadia’s batch mate. Cannes also honoured veteran filmmaker Santosh Sivan for his contributions to cinematography with the Pierre Angenieux Tribute. He is an FTII alumna.

The FTII has often been targeted by right-wing Hindutva supporters who vilify the institute as a 'den of anti-national activity'.

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