The prestigious Cannes International Film Festival 2023 is slated to take place at Cannes in May. This year, two Indian films will make their debuts at Cannes 2023. Indian films showcasing their wares at Cannes is nothing new. Every year, Indian film studios and filmmakers strive to send their deserving films to Cannes. It’s another matter that not every film makes it to the main Cannes event.
Interestingly, it is not mainstream Indian films that have stirred interest at Cannes in recent times. Instead, it is documentary films that have made the Cannes jury sit up and take notice of Indian films and filmmakers. In 2021, Payal Kapadia’s ‘A Night Of Knowing Nothing’ won the top Golden Eye Award. The very next year, in 2022, Shaunak Sen’s ‘All That Breathes’ won the same award, the Golden Eye for Best Documentary Feature.
This makes it two consecutive years of winning the Best Documentary Film Award at Cannes. In between, Rintu Thomas’ ‘Writing With Fire’ too made a splash at the Oscars and at Sundance, though not at Cannes.
After all these accolades for Indian documentary films, disappointingly, no Indian documentary feature film is in the running at the 76th Annual Cannes Film Festival.
That said, here are the two mainstream Indian films that will premiere at the 76th Cannes Film Festival next month –
1. Kennedy –
Kennedy is written and directed by maverick filmmaker, Anurag Kashyap. The film is a dark police noir, starring Rahul Bhat and Sunny Leone in lead roles. The movie tells the story of an insomniac ex-cop Kennedy (Rahul Bhat in the titular role), who is long thought to be dead. While the plot of the film is under wraps, Anurag Kashyap describes Kennedy as “a ghost in the system looking for redemption”. Kennedy will play in the Midnight Screenings segment of the festival. It is produced by Zee Studios, and Ranjan Singh and Kabir Ahuja of Good Bad Films.
2. Agra –
‘Agra’ is a dark satirical film, written and directed by Kanu Behl, who’s earlier made the edgy ‘Titli’. Atika Chohan is co-writer of ‘Agra’. The film is an exploration of sexuality in the Indian context. It dives into the sexual dynamics within a family, and how individuals give vent to their carnal desires in a country of more than a billion people and extreme lack of space. The official synopsis of Agra reads “The story of a family and an exploration of space in an increasingly crowded world. It follows the quest for a sexual odyssey of an individual”.
Agra stars Mohit Agarwal, Rahul Roy, Priyanka Bose, Ruhani Sharma, Vibha Chibber, Sonal Jha and Aanchal Goswami in pivotal roles. It is produced by Saregama India Ltd, UFO Production, and O28 Films. Agra will play in the Directors’ Fortnight segment of the Cannes Film Festival, 2023.
The 76th annual Cannes Film Festival will take place from May 16 to 27.
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