‘Sunflowers Were the First Ones to Know’ by Chidananda S Naik Receives Cannes’ La Cinef Award for Best Short
“Sunflowers Were the First Ones to Know…” from Chidananda S Naik, a student from FTII, Pune, India, has received La Cinef Award for best short, sparking thunderous applause, at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.
The film, the director told Variety, was “challenging to shoot.”
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“We had only four days. I was basically told not to make this film. It’s based on folklore from Karnataka [in India]. These are the stories we grew up with, so I was carrying this idea since my childhood.
In the film, an elderly woman steals a rooster and deprives a village of sunlight.
Jurors Lubna Azabal, who was the president, Marie-Castille Mention-Schaar, Claudine Nougaret, Paolo Moretti and Vladimir Perišić, also decided to award joint second prize to “The Chaos She Left Behind” by Nikos Kolioukos (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki – Greece) and “Out the Window Through the Wall” by Asya Segalovich (Columbia University – U.S).
Claudine Nougaret praised the first one for “remarkable acting and writing full of finesse.”
Talking about “Out the Window Through the Wall,” Paolo Moretti mentioned atmosphere and characters “as playful as they are poetic.”
“The director invites us to resist the colonization of the imagination by the rhetoric of war and paints a subtle portrait of a generation torn apart.”
Third prize went to “Bunnyhood”by Mansi Maheshwari (NFTS – United Kingdom). “I was so happy that animation got to compete with live-action. It’s all film,” noted the director.
“Animation has the power to bring us all together. This one will influence mothers to stop lying to their children,” said Marie-Castille Mention-Schaar, later adding: “A producer in me was very excited about meeting all of you and the producer in me said: ‘i would love to talk to them about their first feature film.’”
For its 27th edition, La Cinef has selected 18 shorts – 14 live-action and 4 animated shorts – from 2,263 submissions from film schools all over the world. It also saw Israel and Palestine competing side by side.
This year’s program, which “reflected the geographic mobility of film students,” stated the organizers, included “Crow Man”by Yohann Abdelnour (ALBA – Lebanon), “Banished Love”directed by Xiwen Cong (Beijing Film Academy – China), “It’ll Pass” (“Praeis”) by Dovydas Drakšas (London Film School – United Kingdom) and “Echoes” by Robinson Drossos (ENSAD – France).
“Us and Them” (“Mauvais Coton”) by Nicolas Dumaret (La Fémis – France), “Terminal” by East Elliott (NYU – U.S.) and Gabriel Esdras’ “Elevation”(Universidad de Guadalajara – Mexico) were also shown.
Also competing were “In Spirito”directed by Nicolò Folin (Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia – Italy), “The Deer’s Tooth”by Saif Hammash (Dar Al-Kalima University – Palestine), “Weeds” (“Plevel”) by Pola Kazak (FAMO – Czech Republic), “Forest of Echoes”by Yoori Lim (Korea National University of Arts – South Korea), “Withered Blossoms”by Lionel Seah (AFTRS – Australia), “Three”by Amie Song (Columbia University – U.S.) and “It’s Not Time for Pop”by Amit Vaknin (Tel Aviv University – Israel).
As pointed out by Lubna Azaba, to make it this far was already a “worldwide recognition and an encouragement to continue on this path.”
She also praised the “hard work, mastery and exceptional maturity” of the participants.
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