Sunflowers Were the First Ones to Know wins Cannes' La Cinef Award!

An important win for India was made when Indian director Chidananda S. Naik's Sunflowers Were the First Ones to Know won the top award for Best Short at Cannes 2024. This accomplishment follows Ashmita Guha Neogi's 2020 triumph for her film CatDog as India's second first prize in five years. On May 23, the prestigious La Cinef awards were revealed.

 

Out of a total of 17 films, FTII student Chidananda S. Naik's film Sunflowers Were the First Ones to Know won the competition. These movies were selected as 18 of the 2,263 submissions received from 555 film schools worldwide. The top prize of 15,000 euros, the second prize of 11,250 euros, and the third prize of 7,500 euros will be awarded by Cannes.

 

Bunnyhood by Mansi Maheshwari won third place in the same category. The film, which is a UK production, was directed by an Indian director from Meerut. Bunnyhood was Mansi Maheshwari's graduation project at the National Film Television School (NFTS) in London. She is originally from Meerut.

 

Chidananda, discussing the same, told to a tabloid, "We had only four days. I was basically told not to make this film. It’s based on folklore from Karnataka (in India). These are the stories we grew up with, so I have been carrying this idea since my childhood."

 

The director created this movie following a year-long program at the Film and Television Institute of India. It is based on a Kannada folktale about an old woman who steals a rooster and plunges her community into an endless dark. This 16-minute short film, titled Sunflowers Were the First Ones to Know, depicts the chaos that the old woman's deeds caused to befall a hamlet. The elderly woman's family is banished as a result of a prophecy being cited in an attempt to recover the rooster.