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, the grieving mother, the child on the pavement, the nurse in Mumbai, the migrant worker on the road, the actress in couture, the filmmaker on a jury, the student from FTII carrying a short film into the future.

 

The relationship began, almost poetically, at the very beginning. In 1946, the first edition of the Cannes Film Festival awarded its Grand Prix to Chetan Anand’s Neecha Nagar, a searing social drama from India. It is worth pausing over that fact. Before the world had learnt to reduce India to song, spectacle, and size, Cannes had already recognised the Indian instinct for moral storytelling. Neecha Nagar was in Competition and won the Grand Prix in 1946 — a foundational moment not only for Indian cinema abroad, but for Cannes itself. 

 

The first footsteps

The early Indian presence at Cannes was marked not by noise but by conscience. Bimal Roy’s Do Bigha Zamin won the Prix International in 1954, bringing to Europe the pain of land, labour, and dispossession. Prakash Arora’s Boot Polish followed in 1955, receiving a distinction for its child performers. Then came Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali, which won the Prix du document humain in 1956 and altered forever the way Indian cinema could be spoken of in the West.

Ray did not arrive at Cannes as an exotic messenger. He arrived as a master. Pather Panchali carried the breath of rural Bengal, but its emotional grammar was universal. Later, Parash Pathar was in Competition in 1958 and Devi in 1962. 

 

Indian cinema’s Cannes story widened when M.S. Sathyu’s Garm Hava reached Competition in 1974, carrying the ache of Partition and the dignity of those history leaves behind. Mrinal Sen’s Kharij, another work of unsettling moral force, won the Jury Prize in 1983. Mira Nair’s Salaam Bombay! won the Caméra d’Or in 1988, giving the world an India of children, survival, tenderness, and terrible neglect. 

 

Ray returns, and the circle completes

In 2025, there was a moment that felt like a cultural full circle. Satyajit Ray’s Aranyer Din Ratri returned to Cannes in a restored print under Cannes Classics. It was especially moving because the film had not been made to impress the West. It was intimate, ironic, urbane, uneasy — a forest film about civilisation, a holiday story about the masks people slip on. 

For Bengal, this mattered deeply. Ray at Cannes is never only about cinema. It is about memory being dusted, restored, and projected again. It is about a generation of viewers realising that heritage survives not when it is worshipped, but when it is watched anew.

 

The independent tide

If the early decades belonged to realism and the great auteurs, the more recent Cannes journey has belonged to a younger, independent India — underfunded, multilingual, formally daring and emotionally exact. Ritesh Batra’s The Lunchbox won the Critics’ Week Viewers Choice Award, also known as the Grand Rail d’Or, in 2013. Neeraj Ghaywan’s Masaan reached Un Certain Regard in 2015 and won the Promising Future Prize, while also taking the FIPRESCI Prize in that section.

 

Then came a remarkable documentary run. Payal Kapadia’s A Night of Knowing Nothing won the Golden Eye for Best Documentary at Cannes in 2021. Shaunak Sen’s All That Breathes, a film about two brothers caring for black kites in Delhi’s poisoned skies, won the Golden Eye in 2022. These films proved that the Indian documentary was no longer standing at the margins of cinema. It was, in many ways, leading the conversation — quietly, intelligently, devastatingly.

 

And then, in 2024, came the moment that shone a new light on Indian cinema. Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine as Light entered the main Competition and won the Grand Prix. It was also India’s return to the main Competition after a long gap, with Shaji N. Karun’s Swaham having been in Competition in 1994.

 

In 2024, India did not have just one story. Chidananda S. Naik’s FTII film Sunflowers Were the First Ones to Know… won First Prize at La Cinef. Anasuya Sengupta won Best Actress in Un Certain Regard for The Shameless, becoming a rare Indian acting presence in the Cannes winners’ roll. 

 

The red carpet and the room where decisions are made

Of course, Cannes is also spectacle, and India has learnt to occupy that stage with flair. Aishwarya Rai Bachchan helped turn the Cannes red carpet into a familiar annual ritual for Indian popular culture. Importantly, she was also reported as the first Indian actress to serve on the Cannes jury in 2003. Nandita Das was on the Feature Film jury in 2005, followed by Sharmila Tagore in 2009. Das returned to serve in the Cinéfondation & Short Films jury in 2013. In the same year, Vidya Balan was on the features jury. The list grew longer with Deepika Padukone in 2022; with Payal Kapadia being the latest to join the Feature Films jury in 2025, after her historic Grand Prix win. 

 

This movement from the red carpet to the jury room matters. It tells us that Indian presence at Cannes is no longer only about being seen. It is also about seeing, judging, shaping, and participating in global taste. The sari, the gown, the flashbulb, the brand ambassador appearance — all of it has its place. But the deeper prestige lies in Indian artists helping decide what world cinema honours.

In 2025, the Indian celebrity presence remained visible, with the likes of Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Alia Bhatt, Janhvi Kapoor, Ishaan Khatter, Karan Johar, Sharmila Tagore, Simi Garewal appearing on the Croisette, while Neeraj Ghaywan’s Homebound screened in Un Certain Regard and Ray’s Aranyer Din Ratri brought back the aura of Indian classic cinema. 

Towards 2026

 

So what should one expect in 2026? The 79th Cannes Film Festival is scheduled from May 12 to 23, 2026. As per the official feature selection list updated on April 23, there is no Indian feature listed in Competition or Un Certain Regard. But that is not the whole story. Cannes is not only one staircase and one prize. It is a vast ecosystem of official sections, student cinema, markets, critics, pavilions and futures. 

 

India’s clearest official 2026 presence comes through FTII again: Mehar Malhotra’s Shadows of the Moonless Nights has been selected for La Cinef. The film follows a night factory worker battling exhaustion and the invisible wounds of sleepless urban labour — a subject that feels unmistakably contemporary, and unmistakably Indian in its social texture.

Payal Kapadia, meanwhile, will preside over the jury of the 65th Semaine de la Critique, to be held in Cannes from May 13 to 21, 2026. After winning the Grand Prix in 2024 and serving on the main jury in 2025, this is another sign of how quickly she has moved from promise to authority.

 

There will also be the continuing presence of India at the Marché du Film, where business, co-productions and global distribution conversations often begin long before films become festival headlines. India was the first ever Country of Honour at the Cannes Film Market in 2022, a diplomatic and industry milestone that recognised both the scale and ambition of Indian cinema. 

 

Perhaps that is the real Cannes lesson for India. We should not go there only to sparkle. We should go there to belong. Glamour fades by morning. A restored print, a student short, a jury seat, a documentary prize, a film like All We Imagine as Light — these remain.

 

From Neecha Nagar to Payal Kapadia, from Ray’s Bengal to the sleepless worker of an FTII short, India’s Cannes journey has been a long walk between memory and possibility. The Croisette may be far from Kolkata, Mumbai, Pune, Delhi or Varanasi. But every now and then, when the lights dim inside a Cannes theatre, India arrives — not as an accessory, but as a story the world must sit still and watch.

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