Udaan poster
City: Indore
Location: University Auditorium, Takshshila Campus, Devi Ahilya Vishwavidyalaya
Date: Thu, 2011/09/08 – 3:30pm
Price: Free and open to all
Category: Festival

Cannes in India Film Festival – 8th to 10 September 2011


Organised in collaboration with the University Cultural Center, Devi Ahilya Vishwavidyalaya, Indore.

A selection of Indian films which were selected by the Cannes Film Festival. Most of the films are first films. The package includes features, short films and an animation film from various parts of the country – in Hindi, Bengali and Malayalam. Cannes in India Film Festival is curated by Ms. Meenakshi Shedde.

A Very Very Silent Film by Manish Jha (2001, 5 min.)
An exploration of the social ills that affect women in poverty: another woman dies again on the streets after living a life of mental and physical abuse.

Recognition at Cannes: The film was awarded the Prix du jury at the Cannes Film Festival 2002 for best short film.

Printed Rainbow by Gitanjali Rao (2006, 15 min.)
A big city. A tiny apartment. There, in solitude, lives an old woman and her cat, stuck in their daily chores against the hiss of the city. The windows look out into more windows with more desolate lives. The old woman, however, has a secret window: her precious collection of match boxes. Their printed labels open into myriad exotic worlds. The cat is the sole companion in her explorations of these magical worlds where beauty, imagination and wonder triumph over the insignificance of her existence. An exquisite, feminist animation short.

Recognition at Cannes: This film was screened in the Cannes International Critics’ Week in 2006 and won three awards—Kodak Discovery Award, Young Critics’ Award and Rail d’Or– for the Best Short Film.

Udaan (Flight) by Vikramaditya Motwane (2010) with Rajat Barmecha, Ronit Roy, Aayan Boradia, Ram Kapoor (Hindi, 138 min.)

After being abandoned for 8 years in boarding school, Rohan returns to the small town of Jamshedpur and finds himself closeted with an authoritarian father and a younger half-brother he didn’t even know existed. Forced to work in his father’s steel factory and study engineering against his wishes, he tries to forge his own life and pursue his dream of being a writer. Wonderful performances.

Recognition at Cannes: The film was in the “Un Certain Regard » category at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival. It was the first Indian feature film to be part of the Cannes’ Official Selection in seven years.