What is the title of the film by Payal Kapadia for which she became the first Indian filmmaker to win the Grand Prix Award at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2024 ?

Question

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — B, All We Imagine as Light. Payal Kapadia's feature — dialogue in Malayalam, Hindi and Marathi, about two Malayali nurses making a life in Mumbai — won the Grand Prix at the 77th Cannes Film Festival, held 14–25 May 2024. The Grand Prix is the Competition jury's second-highest honour, ranked immediately below the Palme d'Or, which that year went to Sean Baker's Anora; the 2024 Competition jury was presided over by Greta Gerwig. Two firsts sit behind the question. It is the first Indian film ever to take the Grand Prix, and it was the first film from India selected for Cannes' main Competition since Shaji N. Karun's Swaham in 1994 — a gap of thirty years, which is why the win was treated as a landmark rather than one more festival prize. Kapadia is a Film and Television Institute of India, Pune graduate and was not new to the Croisette: her documentary A Night of Knowing Nothing had already won the Golden Eye (L'Œil d'or), the festival's best-documentary prize, in 2021. What makes this a hard question rather than a headline recall is that all four options are genuine Cannes 2024 titles, so a candidate who remembers only 'an Indian did well at Cannes' cannot get there. The Shameless is Konstantin Bojanov's film, for which Anasuya Sengupta won the Un Certain Regard performance prize; Sunflowers Were the First Ones to Know... is an FTII student short that won the La Cinef first prize; and The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent took the Short Film Palme d'Or. Only one of the four was directed by Kapadia, and only one won the Grand Prix.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) A real Cannes 2024 film, but directed by the Bulgarian filmmaker Konstantin Bojanov, not by Payal Kapadia. It won an acting prize, not the Grand Prix: Anasuya Sengupta shared the Un Certain Regard performance award for it with Abou Sangaré for Souleymane's Story — itself a first for an Indian performer, which is exactly why this title sticks in the memory alongside Kapadia's.  (c) Chidananda S. Naik's short film, made at the Film and Television Institute of India, Pune, which won the first prize in La Cinef — the section for film-school work. A genuine Indian win at Cannes 2024, but in the student competition, and by a different director; the Grand Prix belongs to the main Competition.  (d) Nebojša Slijepčević's Croatian short, winner of the Short Film Palme d'Or at Cannes 2024. It is neither Indian nor a feature, and the Short Film Palme d'Or is a separate award from the Competition's Grand Prix. The option is on the list precisely because its award also carries a grand-sounding name.

Concept: The Cannes Film Festival's main Competition has a fixed hierarchy of prizes, and questions of this kind almost always turn on knowing it rather than on knowing the film. The Palme d'Or is the top award; the Grand Prix is second; the Jury Prize is third; then come Best Director, Best Screenplay and the two acting prizes. Running alongside the Competition are parallel sections with their own juries and their own prizes — Un Certain Regard for newer or more unconventional work, La Cinef for films made at film schools, a separate short-film competition with its own Palme d'Or, and the Golden Eye for documentaries. Because each section hands out prizes with impressive titles, an exam can build a plausible-looking option set out of four different winners of four different awards in the same fortnight, as this question does.

State PCS 2024 Q128 — Current Affairs PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2024 Q128 — Current Affairs PYQ with Answer