Payal Kapadia is receiving widespread acclaim for her debut fiction film "All We Imagine As Light," which made history by winning Grand Prix, the second-highest honour at Cannes 2024.
However, during her time at the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), she faced significant challenges, including disciplinary action and an FIR filed against her.
During her time as a student at the Pune-based Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) in 2015, Kapadia faced disciplinary action when she led a four-month-long protest. The protest was against the appointment of Gajendra Chauhan, a television actor-turned-politician, as the chairman of the prestigious film institution.
The protest, stated to be the longest in FTII's history, lasted 139 days against the purely "political" appointment of Chauhan, who was also known for his seedy roles in B-grade and C-grade films. Kapadia and other protesters argued that Chauhan lacked the necessary credentials for the position. She boycotted her classes in protest, which led to the revocation of her scholarship by the institute. Moreover, an FIR was lodged against her and she faced disciplinary action.
From that protest was born such independent films of students as Prateek Vats’ Eeb Allay Ooo! (2019) and Payal Kapadia’s Cannes’ L’oeil d’Or-winning documentary Night of Knowing Nothing (2021).
Eventually, the FTII decided to support Payal Kapadia, when her 13-minute film, Afternoon Clouds, was selected for Cannes, reports point out.
Today FTII and India is claiming a piece of the pie that is Payal Kapadia's win at Cannes, but Payal Kapadia's Cannes win, according to Moneycontrol, among other things, shows India why student dissent is important in universities. Free thinking in liberal spaces and dissent through art should be par for the course.