Mysuru filmmaker Chidananda S Naik bags Cannes La Cinef first prize

Canne: In a major triumph for India at the 77th Cannes Film Festival, Chidananda S Naik’s “Sunflowers Were the First Ones to Know…” won the first prize of La Cinef on Thursday here.

The Mysuru doctor-turned-filmmaker made the film at the end of his one-year course in the television wing of Pune’s Film and Television Institute of India.

“Sunflowers…” is based on a Kannada folk tale about an old woman who steals a rooster.

The third prize of the La Cinef competition went to Mansi Maheshwari’s animation film “Bunnyhood”.

Maheshwari, born in Meerut and an ex-student of NIFT Delhi, made the film as a student of UK’s National Film and Television School.

The second prize was shared by “Out of the Widow Through the Wall”, directed by Columbia University’s Asya Segalovich, and “The Chaos She Left Behind”, made by Nikos Kolioukos of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece.

The Cannes Film Festival awards a 15,000 euro grant for the first prize winner, 11,250 euros for the runner and 7,500 euros for the third prize recipient.

The awarded films will be screened at the Cinema du Pantheon on June 3 and at the MK2 Quai de Seine on June 4.

The first prize for Naik is India’s second in five years. In 2020, Ashmita Guha Neogi, also from FTII, won the award for her film “CatDog”.