Move over Bollywood, Indian art-house cinema is on the rise and picking up awards
Films such as All We Imagine as Light, Sister Midnight and Santosh are showing a different side to Indian cinema and attracting global fans
Indian art-house cinema is flourishing, showing a different side to the Indian movie industry best known for its glossy Bollywood films.
Twelve months ago, her sensitive, subtle, dreamy film about three women hospital workers in Mumbai became the first Indian drama selected for the Cannes Film Festival’s main competition in 30 years.
It won the Grand Prix, the festival’s second-most prestigious prize after the Palme d’Or.
All We Imagine as Light was not the only Indian film to feature at Cannes in 2024. It was joined by Karan Kandhari’s droll British-funded marital comedy Sister Midnight, which stars Radhika Apte as a new wife in a Mumbai slum who undergoes an unusual transformation.
Beside these two films, Santosh – Sandhya Suri’s British-Indian crime yarn starring Shahana Goswami as a widow who inherits her husband’s job as a police constable in rural India – and The Shameless, a romantic crime tale that won Anasuya Sengupta the best actress prize in the festival’s Un Certain Regard strand, also featured.