Every year, the Cannes Film Festival in France has become a spectacle not just for the Indian films presented there, but also for the fashion on the red carpet. On the sidelines of it, filmmaker Anurag Kashyap rues that Indian celebrities and filmmakers have forgotten the point of the festival.
Anurag Kashyap on Cannes red carpet
Talking to Sucharita Tyagi, Anurag said, “In India, the problem and obsession with Cannes is only to walk the red carpet. They don't understand that there is a festival, and the purpose of it is beyond the red carpet.” When asked about how nobody knows that Anurag was there on the opening day, he remarked, ‘hum log side se chale jaate hain’ (we head in from the side) instead of posing on the carpet.
When asked about it again, Anurag remarked that the red carpet was the ‘least important’ part of Cannes and that cinema was the point. He also claimed that the Indians who come to the Cannes market aren’t watching the films.
When it was pointed out that the only Indian films at Cannes this year were the short film Shadows of the Moonless Night and the restored film Amma Ariyan, he said, “There is a lot of misinformation in India, and the producers fear festivals. So what happens is, they are never in time. They are delayed. And even if the film had a chance to showcase itself at any of the categories, they lose that chance because they are never in time.”
