UPPSC 2024 Prelims GS Paper-I · Question 56 of 150

Correct — B, Anasuya Sengupta. At the 77th Cannes Film Festival, held from 14 to 25 May 2024, the Un Certain Regard jury gave its Performance Prize to Anasuya Sengupta for her role in The Shameless, a film directed by the Bulgarian filmmaker Konstantin Bojanov; the prize was shared with Abou Sangaré for Souleymane's Story. She is the first Indian to win an acting award in the Un Certain Regard section. It was an unusually good festival for India. Payal Kapadia's All We Imagine as Light took the Grand Prix — the second-highest honour at Cannes, after the Palme d'Or, which went to Sean Baker's Anora — and Chidananda S. Naik of FTII Pune won the first prize in the student section, La Cinef, for Sunflowers Were the First Ones to Know. Two things are worth fixing in memory here. First, Un Certain Regard is a distinct competitive section of Cannes, parallel to the main Competition, meant for original and unconventional work, with its own jury and its own slate of awards; a prize there is not a Palme d'Or and should never be reported as one. Second, the commission's phrase 'best actress award' is loose — the section's acting honour is formally a Performance Prize and in 2024 it was shared between a woman and a man — but there is no ambiguity about who the Indian winner was, and (b) is the only defensible option.

• (a)Kiara Advani — Wrong. Kiara Advani is a Hindi-film actress who has appeared at Cannes as an invited guest and brand ambassador, which is the sort of appearance that fills Indian news coverage of the festival every May. Her name does not appear anywhere in the 2024 prize list, in Un Certain Regard or any other section.
• (c)Urvashi Rautela — Wrong, and included for the same reason as (a). Red-carpet presence at Cannes is a matter of invitation and sponsorship, not of competition; a film has to be selected into a section and then win a jury vote for an award. No award at the 2024 festival went to her.
• (d)Sobhita Dhulipala — Wrong. She is not among the winners at Cannes 2024. The full 2024 prize list contains exactly one Indian acting winner — Anasuya Sengupta, in Un Certain Regard — alongside Payal Kapadia's Grand Prix and Chidananda S. Naik's La Cinef first prize.

The Cannes Film Festival, held each May at the Palais des Festivals in Cannes on the French Riviera, is organised in several sections. The main Competition awards the Palme d'Or, then the Grand Prix, then the Jury Prize, plus prizes for direction, screenplay and acting. Un Certain Regard is a second competitive section, introduced in 1978, reserved for films with an unusual point of view or an unconventional narrative; it has its own jury and its own awards, including a performance prize. Separate again are Out of Competition screenings, the parallel sections Directors' Fortnight and Critics' Week, and La Cinef, the student-film competition. Knowing which section a prize came from is what separates a correct answer from an approximate one.

The distractor design in this item is transparent once you see it: three well-known Hindi-film actresses whose Cannes appearances are red-carpet ones, set against a name most candidates would not recognise. That is deliberate, and it is a reminder that in awards questions the winner is very often the less famous name, because juries at festivals like Cannes reward the film and the performance, not the star wattage. The safest preparation is to keep a short annual list — for each major festival and award season, who the Indian winner was and in which category — rather than trying to remember who attended. Anchor this to the exam date of 22 December 2024, seven months after the festival, which is exactly the lag at which UPPSC harvests its current affairs.

• The 77th Cannes Film Festival ran from 14 to 25 May 2024.
• Anasuya Sengupta won the Un Certain Regard Performance Prize for The Shameless, directed by Konstantin Bojanov; the prize was shared with Abou Sangaré for Souleymane's Story. She is the first Indian to win an acting award in that section.
• Payal Kapadia's All We Imagine as Light won the Grand Prix, the second-highest prize of the main Competition; the Palme d'Or went to Anora, directed by Sean Baker.
• Chidananda S. Naik of FTII Pune won the first prize in La Cinef, the festival's student-film competition, for Sunflowers Were the First Ones to Know.
• Un Certain Regard, created in 1978, is a competitive section separate from the main Competition, with its own jury; other Un Certain Regard prizes in 2024 went to Black Dog (main prize) and Souleymane's Story (jury prize).

• Confusing the sections. A prize in Un Certain Regard is not the Palme d'Or, and the Grand Prix is the runner-up prize of the main Competition, not the top one.
• Assuming the most famous Indian name at Cannes is the winner. Red-carpet attendance and competition entry are unrelated.
• Mixing up the 2024 Indian winners with each other — Anasuya Sengupta took an acting prize in Un Certain Regard, Payal Kapadia a directing-section prize in the main Competition, and Chidananda S. Naik a student-section prize.

UPPSC asks awards as bare 'who won' items and often supplies three celebrity distractors and one real winner. UPSC has largely stopped asking film awards directly; when it touches culture it asks about institutions, heritage listings and classical forms instead. For UPPSC, keep a one-page annual awards table.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  At the Cannes Film Festival 2024, which Indian film won the Grand Prix?

  • (a)The Shameless
  • (b)All We Imagine as Light
  • (c)Sunflowers Were the First Ones to Know
  • (d)Anora

  Answer(b) All We Imagine as Light, directed by Payal Kapadia — the Grand Prix is the second-highest award of the main Competition. Anora, by Sean Baker, took the Palme d'Or; Sunflowers Were the First Ones to Know won the La Cinef student prize for Chidananda S. Naik.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Un Certain Regard, in which an Indian won an acting prize in 2024, is a section of which film festival?

  • (a)Berlin International Film Festival
  • (b)Venice Film Festival
  • (c)Cannes Film Festival
  • (d)Toronto International Film Festival

  Answer(c) Cannes Film Festival — Un Certain Regard was introduced at Cannes in 1978 as a competitive section for unconventional work, separate from the main Competition that awards the Palme d'Or. Berlin awards the Golden Bear and Venice the Golden Lion.