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the world’s premier film festival has not traditionally been a happy hunting ground for Indian cinema, certainly not in the past decade and a half. The 65th edition of the Cannes Film Festival (which begins on May 16-27) could, however, turn out to be a markedly different story. Not only does India have as many as four films in various sections of the event this year, the chances of its contemporary independent cinema pulling off a surprise or two in the high-profile, fiercely competitive arena are pretty decent. Leading the charge is Mumbai-based filmmaker Ashim Ahluwalia’s debut feature, Miss Lovely, one of 53 films that have made it to the official selection of the 65th Cannes Film Festival. Miss Lovely, a Hindi film about two brothers who make sleazy C-grade horror films in Mumbai in the mid-1980s, is the second Indian film in three years to be included in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section. In 2010, another debutant, Vikramaditya Motwane, had made the cut with Udaan, an intense coming-of-age drama set in Jamshedpur, to end a seven-year Cannes drought for Indian films. The previous Indian entry in the Un Certain Regard section was Murali Nair’s Arimpara, a Malayalam film based on an O. V. Vijayan novel, in 2003. The last Indian title that competed for Cannes’ big prize, the Palme d’Or (Golden Palm), was Shaji N Karun’s Malayalam film Swaham, way back in 1994. Miss Lovely, featuring Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Niharika Singh and Anil George, will be up for a Camera d’Or for debut films as well as the awards in the Un Certain Regard section. British actor-director Tim Roth, star of films like Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and Rob Roy, is the head of the Un Certain Regard jury. Ahluwalia’s film is one of 17 titles chosen in the section, which includes Canada’s Xavier Dolan (Laurence Always), China’s Lou Ye (Mystery), Morocco’s Nabil Ayouch (God’s Horses) and Argentina’s Pablo Trapero (White Elephant). Also up for the Camera d’Or will be the Anurag Kashyap-produced Peddlers, directed by his erstwhile assistant, Vasan Bala. The film has been selected for the Cannes Critics Week, an independent sidebar section that runs parallel to the main festival. The artistic director of the Cannes Critics Week, Charles Tesson, was effusive about Peddlers, a film set in the Mumbai underworld and featuring Gulshan Devaiah, Siddharth Menon and Kriti Malhotra. "Peddlers is something we’ve been waiting for from Indian cinema for a long time. It portrays a town, Mumbai, and explores the opposition in the town’s labyrinths between a drug dealer and a cop with odd behaviour and impotence. Good news: Indian cinema is now fearless!" Anurag Kashyap himself has a film in the mix as a director. His two-part, five-hour-long gangster epic, Gangs of Wasseypur, has made it to the prestigious Directors’ Fortnight, another major sidebar. Edouard Waintrop, the new artistic director of the non-competitive Director’s Fortnight, described Gangs of Wasseypur as "an event". "It’s a rather funny film, a lot of things happen," he said of the saga that spans across a 40-year period in a fierce family feud in the Dhanbad coal belt. Michel Gondry’s The We & the I will be the opening film of the Director’s Fortnight. Indian cinema will be the subject of a debate to be held as part of the Director’s Fortnight this year. A film from Indian cinema’s past — Uday Shankar’s Kalpana — will be screened in the Cannes Classics section, a showcase for restored prints of world cinema masterpieces. Kalpana will play alongside such titles as Shohei Imamura’s The Ballad of Narayama, David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia and Roberto Rossellini’s Journey to Italy. The 65th Cannes Film festival will open with Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom and close with the late Claude Miller’s final film, Therese Desqueyroux, which features Audrey Tautou in a stellar role. The festival’s main feature films competition includes David Cronenberg’s Cosmopolis, Leos Carax’s Holy Motors, Jacques Audiard’s Rust and Bone, Michael Haneke’s Amour, Ken Loach’s The Angels’ Share and Abbas Kiarostami’s Like Someone in Love. Haneke, Loach and Kiarostami are past Palme d’Or winners. Another Palme d’Or winner will be vying for the festival’s top prize yet again — Romania’s Cristian Mungiu, with Beyond the Hills. Also in the competition are films by French veteran Alain Resnais, Mexican auteur Carlos Reygadas, Brazilian producer-director Walter Salles, Egyptian director Yousry Nasrallah and Korea’s Hong Sangsoo and Im Sangsoo, among others. In the Marche du Film (the Cannes Film Market), among the several Indian films will be looking for buyers is Anurag Basu’s Barfi!, starring Ranbir Kapoor and Priyanka Chopra. Also lined up for market screenings in Cannes this year are Nila Madhab Panda’s Jalpari: The Desert Mermaid; Shivajee Chandrabhushan’s One More, about an ice hockey team from Ladakh; Nikhil Advani’s animation film, Delhi Safari; and Rajan Khosa’s Gattu. Coming off 2010’s Un Certain regard, Motwane has moved on to more mainstream fare with the Ranveer Singh-Sonakshi Sinha-starrer Lootera, but Ahluwalia, who will hold the Indian flag aloft this year, is adamant that he has no interest in Bollywood stars. Could this uncompromising stance prove to be the crucial difference and help Indian cinema register a real Cannes breakthrough? We can only wait and watch.
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