At the 77th Cannes Film Festival in 2024, Indian cinema ended a 30-year jinx. Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine as Light broke into the Competition line-up, becoming the first film from India to do so since Shaji N. Karun’s 1994 Malayalam-language Swaham.
Kapadia was the first Indian woman filmmaker to compete for the Palme d’Or (Golden Palm). The prize eventually eluded her. The FTII (Film and Television Institute of India) alumna had to settle for the Grand Prix, the award for the second-best film. But that was no mean achievement. No Indian film had ever won the Cannes Grand Prix since the inception of the award in 1967.