‘Sunflowers Were the First Ones to Know’ by Chidananda S Naik Receives Cannes’ La Cinef Award for Best Short
variety.comMarta Balaga “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.” “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).
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