Cannes: Mumbai-born filmmaker Payal Kapadia's Malayalam-Marathi-Hindi language feature film, "All We Imagine As Light", won the Grand Prix award at the 77th Cannes Film Festival.
Set in Mumbai, "All We Imagine As Light" bagged the award, which is the second-most prestigious prize of the festival after the Palme d'Or, during the closing ceremony of the influential international film festival in the French Riviera.
An alumnus of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune, Kapadia is the first Indian filmmaker to be selected to the Cannes competition section in three decades. The last Indian director in the competition for Palme d'Or was Malayalam filmmaker Shaji N Karun in 1994 for "Swaham" (My Own).
An India-France-Netherlands-Luxembourg-Italy co-production, "All We Imagine As Light" stars Malayalam actors Kani Kusruti, Divya Prabha, Hridhu Haroon and Azees Nedumangad along with Marathi actor Chhaya Khadam.
Shot in Mumbai during monsoon and Ratnagiri in Maharashtra last year, "All We Imagine As Light" tells the story of two Kerala nurses in Mumbai negotiating arranged marriages, economic inequalities and communal hatred.
Kapadia had won the Golden Eye Best Documentary Award in Cannes for "A Night of Knowing Nothing" in 2021.
Kapadia was also the first FTII student to be selected to the Cannes festival's competition for film schools around the world in 2018 for her diploma film, "Afternoon Clouds", based on the true story of a nurse from Kerala caring for her nonagenarian grandmother in Mumbai.
Earlier this week, Mysuru-based Kannada filmmader Chidananda S Naik's FTII end-of-course film, "Sunflowers Were The First To Know", won the First Prize of the Cannes festival's La Cinef competition for film schools.
Another Indian filmmaker, Meerut-born Mansi Maheshwari, a student of the National Film and Television School in the United Kingdom, won the Third Prize of La Cinef for her animation film, "Bunnyhood".
On Friday, Bengali actor Anasuya Sengupta won the Best Actress award in the Cannes festival's Un Certain Regard category for fresh voices in world cinema, for her performance in "The Shameless", a Hindi feature film set in India and directed by Bulgarian filmmaker Konstantin Bojanov.
Director-cinematographer Santosh Sivan was bestowed Pierre Angénieux Tribute, becoming the first Asian cinematographer to receive the prestigious award.