Nine years are all it took for FTII graduate Payal Kapadia to go from "anti-national" to toast of the nation. The young filmmaker, whose 'All We Imagine As Light' clinched the Grand Prix at Cannes Saturday, was a student at the country's cradle of cinema and TV when she braved chants of "go to Pakistan" for participating in a 139-day protest in 2015 against the appointment of actor Gajendra Chauhan as the institute's chairperson.

She, along with 34 other former students, continue to wage a legal battle over a case filed by the then institute's director, Prashant Pathrabe, alleging their involvement in gheraoing him and vandalizing his office that year.

But a day after conquering Cannes, there was not a trace of rancour in Payal's words. All she reflected was the afterglow of an unprecedented triumph that she gracefully shared with fellow filmmakers from India.

"It's a great feeling to receive this prize because there are so many good films from India alongside ours, and we feel a part of the larger family of filmmakers. We have three films from FTII directors this time. My FTII batchmate Maisam Ali's film 'In Retreat' is the first Indian entry to Cannes' ACID sidebar (Association for the Diffusion of Independent Cinema)," she told TOI from the French Riviera.

Also, an FTII student’s (Chidananda Naik) film, titled ‘Sunflowers Were The First To Know’, won the main prize in La Cinef section. “It’s fantastic for us and FTII.” Payal’s batchmates and other alumni recall that the 2015 protest was “against the appointment of people who had no achievement in filmmaking” but were allegedly included in FTII’s governing council for political reasons.

Harishankar Nachimuthu, ex-president of FTII Students’ Association and spearhead of the agitation, said Payal always had a vision about where she wanted to go and was willing to fight it out. “She was denied a scholarship and a foreign exchange opportunity for participating in the four-month protest. But even she would agree that FTII made us better filmmakers, better human beings, and responsible citizens,” he said.

Payal credited her teachers and students at FTII for her success, saying that while not everyone needed to go to a film school, the institute benefited her with a structure that facilitates the dissemination of different cinematic ideas. “It is also a great place to meet people who share a love for cinema. My batchmates were instrumental in shaping my ideas. At FTII, we got to see films from all over the world and this exposure helped me make my film.”

Payal’s peers and seniors see her as a film aficionado perpetually behind the camera, documenting various subjects, and relentlessly pursuing any project she takes up to fruition.

Ajayan Adat, winner of the 53rd Kerala State Film Awards for best sound design, was Payal’s senior by two years in college. He said her big qualities were patience and diligence. “She was pained by the then govt’s attitude against the students’ protest. So she took out a camera and started filming everything. She made hours of footage into a documentary titled ‘Night Of Knowing Nothing’. It won the L’Oeil d’Or at Cannes in 2021.”