“India didn’t have any moment at Cannes,” says filmmaker Anurag Kashyap, stressing that the victory of independent filmmakers at the European gala is theirs alone and the country doesn’t support that kind of award winning cinema.

India won three awards at the 77th edition of the Cannes Film Festival last month – Payal Kapadia became the first-ever director from India to win the Grand Prix for her movie All We Imagine As Light, Anasuya Sengupta was awarded best actress in the Un Certain Regard strand for The Shameless, and FTII student Chidananda S Naik earned the best short film award at the La Cinef section for Sunflowers Were the First Ones to Know.

“I get very upset when it’s said ‘India@Cannes’. This is a boost... a shot in the arm for a lot of independent filmmakers but their victory is their own,” Anurag Kashyap told PTI in an interview.

He said Kapadia’s All We Imagine As Light, which was also the first film from India in 30 years to feature in the main competition at Cannes, received funding from a French company. The Malayalam-Hindi feature, which earned the second highest award at Cannes after Palme d’Or, is an Indo-French co-production between Petit Chaos from France and Chalk and Cheese Films from India.

There were several films at Cannes with either India-set stories or Indian talent, but most were co-productions with banners from other countries. Indian-British filmmaker Sandhya Suri’s Santosh and Karan Kandhari’s Sister Midnight were funded by the UK, while Konstantin Bojanov’s The Shameless was almost self-funded. However, Chidanand’s Sunflowers... is a production of the TV Wing one-year programme under the FTII. “India just likes to take credit for a lot of things, they do not support these films, and they don’t even support these films to have a release in cinema,” he said.

In 2021, Kapadia had won an award at Cannes for the documentary A Night of Knowing Nothing but is yet to be released in India. “Stop taking credit for it. Even if the film is released, no one will go to watch it in the theatre,” the 51-year-old said.

Kashyap, whose films such as Gangs Of Wasseypur, Ugly, and Kennedy have screened at Cannes, said he was surprised when former FTII chairperson Gajendra Chauhan took credit for Kapadia’s win. In 2015, Kapadia was one of the students who protested against the appointment of Mahabharat actor-politician Chauhan as the FTII chief. Kapadia was among the 35 students charged under Indian Penal Code sections for offences related to unlawful assembly and rioting. The chargesheet was filed in 2016, and the next hearing is scheduled for June 26.

“The worst part is the man who put the case against her, and sent some students to jail, is the first man who took the credit and said, ‘I’m proud I was the FTII (chairperson)’. What is his name? Yudhishthir ji (his ‘Mahabharat’ role), Gajendra Chauhan said, ‘I’m so proud that she was the student when I was the head’. You are the one who put the case against her,” Kashyap added.

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