FOR Indian filmmakers, the Cannes Film Festival has remained one of the choicest platforms to showcase their newest work. Yet, year after year, they have failed to secure a place in the competition section. Christian Jeune, director of the Film Department of the festival, says: \u201cBelieve me, we are dying to get more Indian entries and to have them in the competition section. We have had some very good films at the festival, Masaan, Titli and Ugly. But they were not in the competition. Indian films should feature in the competition section of other festivals too.\u201d<\/p>\n
During his recent visit to India, Jeune explained the process of picking movies for the festival. \u201cWe try to make the best selection possible. Of course, there will be mistakes, as the selection is based on personal choices.\u201d So, there are movies that the festival didn\u2019t pick but they went on to become successful eventually? \u201cYeah. Probably,\u201d says Jeune with a chortle.<\/p>\n
However, in defense of the festival\u2019s selection process, he says, \u201cThe audience at Cannes is very different from other film festivals. It consists of professionals, mainly mediapersons. While selecting movies, we have to keep that in mind. The flip side of this is that the mediapersons expect every movie to be a masterpiece. Sometimes, we don\u2019t select certain films assuming that they would be at risk in Cannes, where they will be open to severe criticism. However, it is okay to take a risk.\u201d Jeune, who is the main contact for sending entries for the festival, believes that films are more \u201ckindly judged\u201d at other festivals, compared to Cannes.<\/p>\n
However, Cannes gives the global visibility that most filmmakers aspire for. Last year\u2019s winner, The Square, is currently in the Oscar race for the Best Foreign Film Award. While Jeune concedes that winning<\/p>\n
Palme d\u2019Or gives a film \u201ca lot of exposure\u201d, there have been occasions when the winners of the top award at Cannes have not had a great run at the box-office.<\/p>\n
When asked about the statement made by actor Jessica Chastain \u2014 who served on the festival jury last year \u2014 about the representation of women in films, Jeune said: \u201cWe are not making the films. We are selecting them.\u201d While presenting the jury report, Chastain had stated, \u201cOne thing I really took away from this experience is how the world views women from the female characters that I saw represented. And it was quite disturbing to me, to be honest. I do believe that if you have female storytelling, you also have more authentic female characters.\u201d Referring to Chastain\u2019s statement, Jeune added, \u201cThis is something to do with our society. This discussion should take place at various sections of our society.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
FOR Indian filmmakers, the Cannes Film Festival has remained one of the choicest platforms to showcase their newest work. Yet, year after year, they have failed to secure a place in the competition section. Christian Jeune, director of the Film Department of the festival, says: \u201cBelieve me, we are dying to get more Indian entries […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17761,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[123],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17760"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17760\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17762,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17760\/revisions\/17762"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}