Although no Indian film is competing in the main category at Cannes this year, Indians have nonetheless stirred a sizable storm at the film festival’s fabled red carpet.Once considered a Mecca for cinema, Festival de Cannes was never averse to brand integrations. After all, our earliest introduction to the French Riviera was a young Aishwarya Rai gleaming under the arch-lights as the gorgeous face of L’Oréal about 20 years ago. A lot has changed since. Even though it was not uncommon to spot a movie-adjacent brand or celebrity, the film festival kept a strict check on their number, ensuring the spotlight remained on the films in focus.Not anymore. Payal Kapadia—the breakout director of last year’s Grand Prix winner All We Imagine As Light—chairs the jury this year. Actor Nitanshi Goel, whose central performance in Laapataa Ladies, India’s official 2024 Oscar entry, has made her Cannes debut.
Neeraj Ghaywan’s second feature film Homebound and Anupam Kher’s debut directorial Tanvi The Great will have their global premieres at the festival. But all anyone is talking about is model Ruchi Gujjar showing up on the red carpet wearing a rather tawdry necklace featuring Prime Minister Narendra Modi.Welcome to the 78th Festival de Cannes, a stage so democratic as to allow Nancy Tyagi to be in the same room as Leonardo Di Caprio. Yay representation and diversity but it isn’t exactly inclusive when the primary metric for entry is the ability to buy your way in. A lot of attendees are invited by the festival, some are backed by brands, meanwhile others just scramble enough to make it to the red carpet and splash it all over their socials.
There has been a lot of furore over influencers usurping a stage that’s not theirs. A trend that started with Diipa Büller-Khosla in 2018 has now exploded beyond comprehension. The content creator contingent this year includes but is not limited to Shalini Passi, Masoom Minawala, Parul Gulati, Sakshi Sindwani, Anushka Sen, Sarah Sarosh and Nitibha Kaul.An appearance at Cannes, no matter how brief, requires meticulous planning and an army of experts. By no stretch of the imagination is it a walk in the park. However, upturning a film festival and pretending that it’s a fashion gala or a networking event instead might garner publicity but does little to champion indie films whose promotion is the festival’s raison d’etre.Most content creators inundate their social media feeds with by-the-minute, real-time updates—looks, behind-the-scenes, what’s in my bag, fit check, unvarnished rants—with the intensity of war reportage. They do it all but watch a film or talk about it, so caught up they are in their B2B blitzkrieg.The current identity crisis that Cannes is going through is reminiscent of the turbulent journey of the now internationally renowned Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF). What started as a vibrant, kaleidoscopic hotspot of books, readers, writers and literary stakeholders soon introduced celebrities, businesses, and aggressive networking into the fold.As a result, JLF ballooned, turning into a prestige event, worthy of bragging rights on Instagram. Hordes would attend—click selfies, eat, listen to live music, shop from the festival buzzaar, crowd the venues, and not sit through one session. Until the pandemic happened, forcing the organizers to reflect and course-correct.The people behind the Cannes film festival also need to ask themselves tough questions. It’s about time. Because more than the influencers, it’s the festival that’s responsible for reducing a niche celebration of cinema into an outsized, sensational circus.The opportunity is too shimmery a bait to let go for content creators. For them, it’s the coming true of a wish too audacious to even be considered. It’s the festival organisers who need to decide how they want to be seen and what they want to be remembered for. As for influencers, a better-suited platform for their time and talent would be the Met Gala or the Paris Fashion Week. With Cannes already under the belt, Manhattan, Milan or Paris cannot be too far away.
