India’s Cannes Journey: Footlights, frames and futures: Eight decades of Indian cinema, celebrities and influence on the Riviera
Aawara hoon, ya gardish mein hoon, aasman ka tara hoon. — Aawara (1951) There is something of that old Raj Kapoor confession in the way India has always arrived at Cannes — a little adrift, a little defiant, but luminous enough to light up a screen in a darkened theatre on the French Riviera. I am all set to be in Cannes next week! Every May, Cannes transforms into a republic of cinema — glamorous, chaotic, occasionally excessive, and yet, at its heart, strangely intimate. Beneath the diamonds, dinner jackets, and flashbulbs, there is always a quieter ceremony taking place: a filmmaker somewhere waits for the lights to go down, a country waits to see how it will be seen, and a story waits to travel beyond the language in which it was born. For India, Cannes has never been merely a red carpet. It has been a mirror, sometimes flattering, sometimes unforgiving, but always important. It has shown the world not one India but many: the hungry village, the restless city, th...
