Secrets of the Stylish: Getting ready for Cannes with Pritika Swarup

EXCLUSIVE: Ellen Wander’s Film Bridge International has sold shark survival thriller Maneater to a host of buyers during the Cannes market including Saban Films (North America, UK, Australia/NZ, Scandinavia and South Africa), Challan Films (Korea), Superfine Films (India), YouPlanet (Spain), ILY Films (France), Monolith (Poland), Suraya Filem (SE Asia), Blitz Film Group (Ex-Yugo), and Selim Ramia and Co. (Middle East).

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentBrut, the digital media startup which became Cannes’ media partner this year, covered the festival with 1,200 video content that were watched by 220 million people around the world.The company hosted the Cannes Creators Connection, an initiative which brought a flurry of content creators and social media stars to the festival for the first time with the aim of building bridges with the film community. On top of the 220 million people who watched Cannes-related content on Brut’s different platforms, an estimated 150,000 people watched the videos of content creators attending the festival with Brut, for instance Adam Waheed and Liza Koshy from the U.S., Casey Neistat from the U.K., Ashish Chanchlani from India, as well as Lena Situation and Squeezie from France.

Naman Ramachandran Amazon Prime Video India has signed a worldwide exclusive multi-film licensing deal with Sajid Nadiadwala’s Bollywood production house Nadiadwala Grandson Entertainment (NGE).NGE’s upcoming slate includes “Bawaal,” starring Varun Dhawan (“Coolie No. 1”) and Janhvi Kapoor (“Gunjan Saxena: The Kargil Girl”), directed by Nitesh Tiwari (“Dangal”).

Cannes Film Festival enters its second week, the glamour and opulence of the red carpet doesn’t seem to be dwindling any time soon. One of the most important events in the celebrity fashion calendar, the famous red steps of the Palais des Festivals have already delivered show-stopping looks from actors and models from across the world. Anne Hathaway quickly went viral after she arrived in a white sequin column gown from Armani Privé.

India’s All That Breathes followed up its victory at the Sundance Film Festival by winning top documentary honors in Cannes.

Naman Ramachandran Indian filmmaker Shaunak Sen’s “All That Breathes” has won the Cannes Film Festival’s top documentary award, the Golden Eye.The film won the documentary grand jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year and was acquired by HBO Documentary Films during Cannes, where it played as a special screening.Set in Indian capital Delhi, where, in an unbreathable atmosphere, the threat of inter-religious massacres floats in the air, the film follows two brothers, Nadeem and Saud, who along with their assistant, dedicate their lives to save the migratory black kites that are destroyed by human madness.The Golden Eye jury, composed of Agnieszka Holland, Iryna Tsilyk, Pierre Deladonchamps, Alex Vicente and Hicham Falah, said: “The Golden Eye goes to a film that, in a world of destruction, reminds us that every life matters, and every small action matters. You can grab your camera, you can save a bird, you can hunt for some moments of stealing beauty, it matters.

Naman Ramachandran Indian activist filmmaker Pa. Ranjith has revealed an extensive production slate featuring top stars and socially relevant themes.Ranjith was at the Cannes Film Market, where he revealed “Vettuvam”, a linked film and TV series, a co-production between his and Aditi Anand’s Neelam Studios and Golden Ratio Films, the film production arm of Vistas Media Capital.First up for Ranjith is “Natchathiram Nagargirathu,” starring Dushara Vijayan (“Sarpatta Parambarai”), Kalaiyarasan Harikrishnan (“Kuthiraivaal”) and Kalidas (“Paava Kadhaigal”). The film is set against the backdrop of the Tamil-language theater scene and explores different facets of love that go beyond gender, and includes straight and LGBTQ+ romances, Ranjith says.

Cannes Film Festival enters its second week, the glamour and opulence of the red carpet doesn’t seem to be dwindling any time soon. One of the most important events in the celebrity fashion calendar, the famous red steps of the Palais des Festivals have already delivered show-stopping looks from actors and models from across the world. Anne Hathaway quickly went viral after she arrived in a white sequin column gown from Armani Privé.

Naman Ramachandran The late Govindan Aravindan’s 1978 masterpiece “Thamp̄” (“The Circus Tent”) is one of two Indian films at this year’s Cannes Classics selection, alongside Satyajit Ray’s “Pratidwandi” (“The Adversary”) from 1970.“Thamp̄” was painstakingly restored by India’s Film Heritage Foundation (FHF), an organization founded by filmmaker Shivendra Singh Dungarpur (“Celluloid Man,” “CzechMate: In Search of Jirí Menzel”) in 2014. Dungarpur facilitated the restoration of Uday Shankar’s landmark film “Kalpana” (1948) by Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Foundation, the restored version of which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2012.

Naman Ramachandran Michel Fessler, co-writer of “Little Nicholas,” selected at Cannes this year as a special screening, has boarded Ravi K. Chandran’s “Tamara” as scriptwriter.Based on a story by Paris-based playwright and actor Vasanth Selvam (“Dheepan”), the film will follow 26-year-old Indian origin woman Tamara from Camargue in the south of France, who seeks her roots in the southern Indian territory Pondicherry, which was once a French colony.

Naman Ramachandran Indian actor Jackie Shroff (“Sooryavanshi”) will play the lead in Singapore-France-India co-production “Slow Joe,” it was revealed at the Cannes Film Market.Shroff will play the late Indian musician Joseph Manuel Da Rocha, known as Slow Joe, a former heroin addict and drug dealer who was born in Mumbai, was disowned by his family, heartbroken at 50 and who moved to Goa and cleaned up. On a trip to Goa in 2007, Lyon-based French musician Cédric de la Chapelle met Joe, now a frail 64-year-old who was making ends meet as a hotel room broker. Joe, also a poet and musician, sang for de la Chapelle, who was captivated by his voice and recorded some of his a cappella songs.Back in France, de la Chapelle played Joe’s songs for music producer Olivier Boccon-Gibod of Horizon Musiques, who was also entranced.

Naman Ramachandran Deaf Crocodile Films and Gratitude Films have acquired Indian films “Lalanna’s Song” and “Dhuin” for North American distribution. The deals were completed during the Cannes Market.“Dhuin” is one of six Indian titles selected by India’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting for a market screening.

Naman Ramachandran The cream of the current crop of young Indian documentary filmmakers were on fire during the annual Doc Day at the Cannes Film Market, discussing ways of expressing dissent within India’s current political dispensation.Since 2014, India has been ruled by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party. Shaunak Sen’s “All That Breathes” is showing as a special screening at the festival and previously won the documentary grand jury prize at Sundance. It follows Delhi-based Muslim brothers Mohammad Saud and Nadeem Shehzad, who, against the backdrop of the territory’s polluted atmosphere and escalating sectarian violence, devote their lives to saving the black kite bird species.“I was absolutely certain that this film was not a snapshot of the current political moment; this film’s main interests were ecological and the human-bird relationship,” Sen said.

Naman Ramachandran Indian documentary “From the Shadows,” by Miriam Chandy Menacherry (“Lyari Notes”), has been selected for the Breaking Through the Lens initiative at the Cannes Film Market.The initiative connects female and non-binary directors to finance at top-tier film markets.In the documentary, artist Leena Kejriwal relentlessly sprays silhouettes on public walls tagged #missing, activist Hasina Kharbhih accompanies girls rescued from child sex trafficking across international borders, and survivor Samina fights a long and arduous legal battle against her traffickers. Parallel narratives intersect to reveal a sliver of hope when women challenge a powerful trafficking nexus operating in a country where every eight minutes a child goes missing.

Zack Sharf Welcome back, Park Chan-wook. The South Korean auteur returned to Cannes six years after “The Handmaiden” with his new detective thriller “Decision to Leave” and earned a five-minute standing ovation.Although the ovation matched the amount of time celebrating “The Handmaiden,” the reception was notably more muted. While the camera the festival uses that normally shows on the creative team’s gracious reaction after the movie, and helps to keep the applause rolling, wasn’t working, the response was quiet even before the technical snafu.“Decision to Leave” centers around a detective who falls in love with a mysterious widow who just happens to be the prime suspect in his latest murder investigation.

Naman Ramachandran Nayla Al Khaja, the first female filmmaker in the United Arab Emirates, and Oscar-, BAFTA- and Grammy- winning Indian composer A.R. Rahman (“Slumdog Millionaire”) are looking forward to their upcoming collaboration on “Baab.”Written by Al Khaja and Masoud Amralla Al Ali, the film follows Wahida, who is unable to make sense of her twin sister’s mysterious death and is plagued by a haunting rhythm in her ears.Rahman and Khaja were present at the Cannes Film Market to promote “Baab.” The composer’s directorial debut, the VR “Le Musk” also had its world premiere at the market’s Cannes XR strand. “It’s about the four stages of grief, but we don’t say it so black and white,” Al Khaja told Variety about the film.

CANNES – It may seem obvious, but sometimes combining two compelling stories doesn’t lead to an overall more captivating film. That’s the primary takeaway from Gina Gammell and Riley Keough‘s somewhat messy “War Pony,” which debuted at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival this weekend.

It is more than a bit ironic in a Cannes Film Festival where Baz Luhrman’s biopic Elvis is one of the most anticipated entries, that the subject of it, Elvis Presley turns out to have another direct connection this year’s fest. His granddaughter Riley Keough is making her directorial debut with the Un Certain Regard selection, War Pony having its World Premiere today. The film focuses on two young Native Americans coming of age and trying to get by in a story set on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. It is a location that has intrigued other filmmakers like Chloe Zhao (The Rider) in recent years, and now has caught the attention of Keough and her co-director Gina Gammell in order to tell an authentic and unique contemporary tale of Native American youth brought to life by an impressive group of first-time actors, mostly locals the directors cast in order to give this as fresh and real a feel as possible. They have succeeded.

Manori Ravindran International EditorHBO Documentary Films has bought worldwide television rights for Cannes Special Screenings title “All That Breathes.”The film is the only Sundance movie to screen as part of Cannes’ Official Selection this year — a feat all the more impressive given Cannes is not known for its documentary programming. In Park City, the film picked up the Grand Jury Prize in the World Cinema Documentary Competition.Directed by Shaunak Sen (“Cities of Sleep”), “All That Breathes” follows two brothers who run a bird hospital dedicated to rescuing injured black kites, which are a staple in the skies of New Delhi, India.In one of the world’s most populated cities, where cows, rats, monkeys, frogs and hogs jostle cheek-by-jowl with people, the “kite brothers” care for thousands of these creatures, which fall daily from New Delhi’s smog-choked skies.

Cannes Film Festival at Palais des Festivals in France. The French model, 27, wore a baby pink tiered mesh floor-length gown as she walked the red carpet on Thursday.