Sunflowers Were the First Ones to Know, directed by Chidananda S. Naik (FTII – India), won the coveted La Cinef award for Best Short Film on Thursday at the 77th Cannes Film Festival. His short took up the top award at La Cinef, which, according to the Film Companion, had eighteen student films selected out of a total of 2263 entries from 555 film schools globally. Naik’s victory is India’s second in five years. Another FTII student, Ashmita Guha Neogi, won the award in 2020 for her film CatDog.
In an interview with Film Companion, Naik discussed how he came up with the concept for the story, which is based on a well-known folklore in Karnataka. He claimed to have known about the concept when he was a little child. He said that when he shared this story with his teammates during their movie discussion, they were intrigued by the concept but had never heard of the story before.
Naik continued to express how “surprised” he was. He then began asking everyone outside of Karnataka if they were aware of this story, and they were not. “If you tell this in Karnataka everyone knows, even a small kid knows the story,” he noted.
In an interview with Variety, he stated that it was “challenging to shoot.” They barely had four days, and Naik said he was essentially advised not to make this movie. According to Hindustan Times, the director completed the film as part of his one-year degree at the Film and Television Institute of India’s television branch.
Sunflowers Were the First Ones to Know, which is based on a Kannada folktale, is about an old woman who steals a rooster and plunges her village into an unending state of darkness.
The film festival screened this 16-minute short fiction film On Tuesday afternoon. A five-person panel led by Belgian actress Lubna Azabal evaluated 18 titles, including Sunflowers Were the Last Ones to Know. The winner of first prize at the Cannes Film Festival receives a stipend of 15000 euros.
The second spot was shared by Out of the Widow Through the Wall, directed by Asya Segalovich of Columbia University, and The Chaos She Left Behind, directed by Nikos Kolioukos of Aristotle University in Thessaloniki, Greece. Mansi Maheshwari’s animated feature Bunnyhood finished third in the La Cinef competition. Mansi, who studied at the National Film and Television School in the UK, was born in Meerut and was once a student at NIFT Delhi.
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