Mysuru filmmaker Chidananda S Naik bags Cannes La Cinef first prize

'Sunflowers were the first ones to know...' is based on Kannada folk tale about an old woman who steals a rooster. As a result of her action, the sun stops rising in the village.

Mumbai: In what comes as a big honour, student film Sunflowers Were The First Ones To Know - based on a Karnataka folklore - made by the Pune-based Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) has won the coveted La Cinef Award at 77th Cannes Film Festival.

Student director Chidananda S Naik, who hails from Karnataka's Mysuru, received this prestigious award at Cannes on 23 May.

“Many congratulations to our students Chidanand Naik (Direction), Suraj Thakur (Camera), Manoj V (Editing) and Abhishek Kadam (Sound), for this big achievement. The reception of this prestigious award is a historical achievement for Indian Cinema,” the FTII said in a post on X on Friday.

The film is based on folklore from Karnataka and was produced as part of FTII’s year end coordinated exercise of TV-wing.

The FTII stands tall among the best film schools in the world and made India proud, the institute said.

FTII President R Madhavan said, “Congratulations to Chidananda Naik and to the entire team for this very prestigious honour. May this be just the beginning of an illustrious career with much more extraordinary recognition and love.”

Speaking to Variety magazine after the award, Naik said, “It was a challenging film to shoot. We had only four days. I was basically told not to make this film. It’s based on folklore from Karnataka. These are the stories we grew up with, so I was carrying this idea since my childhood.”

La Cinef consisted of 18 student films, chosen out of 2,263 entries coming from 555 film schools around the world.

The 29-year-old Mysuru doctor-turned-filmmaker has made the film at the end of his one year course.

Before joining FTII to pursue his dream of film direction, he studied medicine in the Mysuru Medical College.

The Short Films and La Cinef Jury presided by Lubna Abeam and consisted of Marie-Castille Mention-Schaar, Paolo Moretti, Claudine Nougaret and Vladimir Perišić.

The Festival de Cannes allocates a €15,000 grant for the First Prize.

“The sun never rises again after an elderly woman steals the village’s rooster, which throws the community into disarray. To bring the rooster back, a prophecy is invoked, sending the old lady’s family into exile,” the Cannes Film Festival said.

The IMDb brief about the film states - "Once upon a time in a village, an old lady steals the rooster and the sun never rises again”.

In the run up to the festival, Naik, in an interview to Film Companion, said: “My job as a director, as a storyteller, is to make someone feel”.

The jury 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 – United States).

Third prize went to Bunnyhood by Mansi Maheshwari (NFTS – United Kingdom).