After a short intro I'll have some spreadsheets and charts, and then a lengthy and pointless analysis, a quick language breakdown, and at the end a list of other South Asian movies that have played at the fests.
Every now and then I get curious about which films from a certain language or country played at the major film festivals (Cannes, Venice, and Berlin being the Big Three) and I start googling around and browsing through Wikipedia until I decide to move on after 15 minutes. I don’t really care about film festivals or awards, but they can be a good way to discover new filmmakers who are worth paying attention to and to find out who some of the major filmmakers doing more artistic work from a specific country are. I don’t pay attention to the film festivals while they’re happening, but when I’m attending a smaller film festival and have to choose what to see from a plethora of options that I mostly have never heard of, a major festival inclusion can act as a tie-breaker, and I generally prioritize the major award winners.
That’s roughly all I ever think about film festival selections, but since I try to write about local movies wherever I travel, and much of my travel is in India, I thought it might be interesting and worthwhile to compile in a spreadsheet all of the Indian movies that have ever played at one of the Big Three film fests. This was also spurred on by the chatter I saw after India had a strong showing at the 2024 Cannes film festival, with the country’s first film in competition at the fest in three decades and its ever Grand Prix win (the runner up for best film).
For the first spreadsheet, I am only including the main feature competition sections. There are many other categories at these fests, some of which are very prestigious and respectable, and Indian films regularly appear in those other sections. I have a second spreadsheet which I’ve included showing the Indian films that played in some of the other Cannes sections which I hold in high regard. I don’t feel the non-competition sections at Venice and Berlin are quite at the same level so I’m not including them, but there are still a lot of great films that play in them and at other festivals that I’m not mentioning.
Also, I want to make it clear that plenty of not great movies play at these fests, and a lot of the best movies don’t play at any festivals at all. It doesn’t really matter and you shouldn’t worry about what plays where. As I said, the festivals are a good way to discover movies that may not have been on your radar otherwise, and of course they are a huge deal for the films and filmmakers and can have a significant impact on their careers, but as a viewer it’s little more than trivia and you shouldn’t really care, and this is how I feel about any sort of festival or award or list of any kind. Your favorite films or filmmakers or even your entire country being excluded isn’t something to get upset about. Sometimes Michelin Bib restaurants are better than Michelin starred restaurants, sometimes one star restaurants are better than two star ones, and sometimes the best places don’t make the guide at all. It’s okay, really. If Indians want to be mad at the French about something in the contemporary world, it should be that the Michelin Guide hasn’t come to India yet, not that their most important film festival doesn’t pick enough Indian movies, but really you shouldn't care so much about any such things.
Still, it’s interesting to look at the overall trajectory of Indian cinema at the major festivals. I think a lot of people would be surprised that Indian films were once a mainstay at the major fests, and I’m curious to explore why that’s no longer the case. It would be interesting to see this done for every country. Maybe someone privately has master databases of everything that has ever played at these fests and they can then sort it however they please, or maybe some talented programmers can write a script to comb through Wikipedia and do this much more efficiently. One day that might be easy for a layperson to do, but for now ChatGPT flunked the test I gave it.
Spreadsheets
Here is the spreadsheet for competition films at the three fests. Let this be a watch-list for everyone!
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YpGBsAySbyRWRPkRlW8cfErF6f6vPOwdeLduM4dPKCI/edit?gid=0#gid=0
I apologize for any mistakes I may have made. If you spot any, shoot me an email and I’ll correct it. This is up to date as of July 2024, and I intend to update it with future festival inclusions. I would request that nobody copy this and try to pass it off as their own, but I guess it's out there now and there's nothing I can do.
Some notes: The years listed are festival years and not the films’ release years. I included major awards whenever I saw them, but didn’t include smaller awards, and didn’t pay that close attention to awards in general. I did not include films that weren’t Indian in any way other than being financed by Reliance.
And here is my database of films that played at Cannes in the Critics’ Week (founded in 1962), Directors’ Fortnight (founded in 1969), and Un Certain Regard sections (founded in 1978):
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/107Hy2NbtfX0v3huVWlPq26ubdcXLv1Nl7H-L7XKfcjY/edit?usp=sharing
I don’t feel like explaining what these sections are (also, does anyone really even know?), though I will say that Un Certain Regard is sort of an official runner up section, while the others are totally separate. What matters is that I respect them all enough to have bothered making this list, and I periodically see films in these sections that I feel are good enough to have been in the competition. There are other Indian films that played in even more categories, or as special screenings, but I'm not including those since they're less prestigious. The secondary categories at Berlin and Venice, where a lot of Indian films also play, can similarly have great films, but I find those categories to be less consistent (and in some cases much newer, being introduced in the 2000s) than these Cannes categories so I didn’t feel the need to include them. A database of those would be worthwhile too, but I have my limits of what I’m willing to do for free and don’t want to spread this exclusive list out too thin.
One note here is that I did not include anthology films with different short films from directors of different countries where one of the countries is India. Those movies are almost always lame anyway. I would have included them if they were in the main competition sections, but they weren’t.
Charts
I’ve also made some charts so you can more clearly track the trajectory of Indian films at these fests.
And this one shows the total by decade:
This makes it look like Indian cinema was totally slacking from the 1990s onward, but you’ll see a lot of Indian films if you look at the Cannes non-main-competition categories, and getting into those is still a very impressive achievement.
Here’s a yearly chart with the total number of non-main-competition films:
And here’s the same info by decade:
Analysis
So, what are the takeaways from all of this?
By my count, there were 69 Indian movies that have ever played in competition at Cannes, Berlin, and Venice. 63 of those were from 1990 and earlier. Up until the 90s it was hardly exceptional for an Indian film to make it into one of the competitions. Since then it is so rare that each film consequently feels like a huge deal. What happened? I have some ideas, but really these are questions, and I would love to hear from people who have some expertise in this.
I actually decided to do this entire thing after one of my favorite Indian film critics Uday Bhatia noted that the 30 year drought of Indian films in competition at Cannes is “a stat which says more about Cannes’ incuriosity than about Indian cinema itself.” To me that statement seemed unfair without some deeper look at which films applied, were eligible, and were worthy of making it in, if there were enough of these year after year that it could be blamed on some general disinterest from the selection team and not on just random variation, and why Cannes, evidently once curious about Indian films, lost its curiosity. I don’t have the knowledge to evaluate any of that, but I do have some ability to look into other questions about why Indian films declined at the fests, which I will try to do here.
There are two big lines of questioning to go down here. One is how Indian cinema has changed over the years, and the other is how the festivals have changed over the years. Both are definitely factors, sometimes in way that are intertwined, though I ultimately feel the decline of Indian films at these festivals remains a bit of a mystery, and a lot of things in life are just inexplicable. Still, I have some answers that I find reasonably plausible.
How Film Festivals Have Changed
First I’ll look at how the festivals have changed.
Changing Total of Films At The Fests
If you go and look at lineups from the early years of the festivals, you’ll see that they are very different from today’s lineups. One clear difference is that they used to select a lot more movies Now it’s typical for each festival to have somewhere around 20 films in competition, give or take a handful. But if you look at, say, 1954, when there were three Indian films in competition at Cannes, you’ll see that there were a total of 43 films in competition.
There’s variation year to year, sometimes for no reason discernible to me, but sometimes for political or economic reasons that limited the fests. Cannes began in 1946 but didn’t have a fest in 1948 or 1950 due to a lack of funds. Venice began in 1932 but was basically a fascist film festival in its early years, and 1946 is when it rebooted. Venice faced further problems during Italy’s “Years of Lead” and was only semi-active from the late 60s to late 70s, with either no fest or a very limited fest occurring. Berlin was founded in 1951 and I don’t know why the number of films was so variable in the early years.
It would have been too time consuming to show the year by year progression of the fests, but I made a chart roughly showing five year intervals, and I did quick looks at intervening years to check that the years I included weren't anomalous. (I’m sure I miscounted here and there but it shouldn’t change the overall trajectory.)
And here is a chart showing the combined total number of films playing at the three fests:
This is interesting and I think partly explains why the 1950s had a lot more Indian movies than the 1960s, but it doesn’t really explain anything else very well other than a few gaps in the early years and the decline in the 70s. The total number of titles at the fests remained largely constant since the 80s when Venice was back in action, so Indian cinema’s decline at the major fests in the 1990s needs further explanation.
Changing Trends In Festival Selection
The other way that the festivals have changed is in their programming. Though there are definitely exceptions, I would describe today’s Big Three festival programming as a mix of upper-middlebrow to highbrow films, compared with the Oscars which are more middlebrow to upper-middlebrow.
(To be clear, I’m not passing any judgment with these categories. My tastes in most things in life are probably upper-middlebrow leaning, though really it’s all over the spectrum with perhaps more appreciation for low than high in many areas. Though I’ll leave this up to readers to decide, this blog is likely middlebrow aspiring to be upper-middlebrow.)
But if you go back to the 40s through 60s, I’d say the festival programming looks more like the Oscars than today's festivals. They’re obviously different different because Cannes is international, but you can directly compare the kinds of American films included in the programming then and now (in the first year of Cannes they played Anna and the King of Siam and Gaslight, for example). The world of cinema has changed a lot since then and the festivals arguably remain at the cutting edge of it, and that's left more mainstream fare behind.
If you look at the Indian films that get selected at the fests today, they are the sort that struggle to even get a theatrical release in India. Go back to the early years of the fests, though, and you will see popular musicals by big name directors such as Raj Kapoor and V. Shantaram. That started to phase out in the 60s and more independent arthouse sorts of films (labeled as “parallel cinema” in India) began to take over the lineups. The earlier years at the fests also saw many Indian films that fall somewhere in the middle (actually called “middle cinema” in India) and those too seemed to fall out of favor at the fests by the 70s.
It’s hard to imagine today’s mainstream Indian filmmakers, whether doing big song and dance films or middle cinema, making it into the fests. Some would argue that this is because the newer generation isn't as good, and maybe they aren't as good, but the broader shift towards higher brow cinema at the fests is a bigger factor.
From the 70s onward, I believe the only mainstream Indian films to make it into the competition sections are Reshma Aur Shera, at Berlin in 1972, and Kudrat, at Berlin in 1981. Are some of the non-Hindi films, such as those by Dasgupta and Karun, considered mainstream in their own industries? I'm not sure, but even if so they are a world away from those big Hindi films.
So, I think the festival shift towards higher brow fare is a good explanation for why the number of Indian films playing at the fests declined from the 50s to 60s (which was also partly explained earlier by the total number of films at the festival) and the 60s to 70s.
(It is worth noting that some of these old mainstream films had separate cuts submitted to the festivals than were shown in India. I don’t know how prevalent that was, but I saw it mentioned on a few Wikipedia pages, with films having shortened runtimes as a result of taking some songs out. I still occasionally hear of this practice happening, with one example being the Tamil film Visaranai which played in the Horizon/Orizzonti section of Venice, a category that I’m not including, in 2015 where it reportedly had more subtle background music than the Indian version. I am curious to know more about this happening, though I realize it doesn’t apply to the vast majority of Indian films that submit to these festivals in the past 50 years.)
Changes in Selection Eligibility
Somebody who knows the history of the fests better than me might be able to explain more about changes in what the selection teams look for in a film, or how different rules factored into what got selected. There have been some changes in the selection process over the years that have changed what kinds of movies get selected, and this is something to keep in mind. With that said, I don’t think it’s made a huge impact on the overall number of Indian films getting selected. I'll touch on it quickly anyway though.
Venice requires all competition films to be world premieres, while Cannes and Berlin require them to at least be international premieres (meaning they can only play in their home countries before being submitted), though I just went through the 2023 Cannes selections and I believe all but one were world premieres. This is very different from the early years at the fest where the films were frequently playing the year after their release.
As I said, I don't think these rules have had a huge impact because they primarily affect mainstream movies which are unlikely to make it into the fests anyways. Mainstream Indian movies get same-day global releases due to the large NRI audience and thus give up their international premiere status in the first weekend. The kinds of movies that would have a better shot of getting into the fests would also rely on the fests as a marketing platform and will plan around that.
Still, it is worth noting that if the next film by [insert mainstream Indian filmmaker you think is amazing and deserves to be at the festivals] were really great and had festival potential, it would very likely not be submitted. These rules also prevent the possibility of a film submitting after a breakout success and critical acclaim, something I could have imagined happening for a film like Lagaan (or did they submit before the release?). I can also imagine films being artistic enough to have festival potential but mainstream enough to have their releases dictated by factors (intuition, algorithm, astrology) that don't align with the timeline they'd have to adhere to when submitting to a festival.
I’d be very curious to know which big Indian movies of recent decades submitted to these fests with the intention of holding off on the local and/or international release in the event that they’re selected. I’m sure some have, but it’s very unlikely to me that it’s a common thing. It's hard to think of many that would have had a shot of getting in, and if anything the exclusivity rule impacts Hollywood’s prestige filmmakers more than anyone else as their releases are timed more for a mix of box office and Oscar potential.
Looking back at India's festival progression, the clear decline in mainstream Indian movies at the fests from the 70s onward I'm pretty sure predates the big same-date international releases that Indian movies have now, and the later decline in Indian movies in the 90s is primarily in small independent movies that have every incentive to plan everything around submitting to the festivals. Therefore, eligibility has little explanatory power for Indian cinema's decline at the fests. With that said, it's plausible that there'd be more Indian movies finding their way into the fests without the premiere requirements.
Changes in the Submission Process
I know that before 1972, committees from individual countries submitted films to Cannes as they do for the Oscars today. I’m not sure exactly how that worked and what happened after that. I’m very out of my depth here. But I am curious to know what impact this may have had. When India stopped sending its own movies (and how many did they send each year?), this may have meant fewer films in general got sent and consequently changed the kinds of films that got sent.
Non-Conclusion
All of that is interesting to me but really I just think the festivals for some reason became more high-brow over time and that hurt Indian films. It still doesn’t explain the 1990s decline though, as by that point we’ve had two decades where predominantly non-mainstream movies played. So, we have to look at...
How Indian Films Have Changed
Now we'll look at how Indian films have changed over time, another area where I'm totally out of my depth but the people who know more than me seem to have better things to do. There are two things we are trying to figure out here based on the trajectory of Indian films at the festival. One is if the quality of mainstream films declined around the 1970s and another is if the quantity or quality of "arthouse" films declined in the 1990s.
Have Mainstream Indian Movies Gotten Worse?
I don’t know! There is a general narrative that the quality declined, but everybody says this about everything in life, and I simply haven’t seen enough pre-1970s mainstream Indian movies to understand how the quality changed. Also, a lot of people I hear discuss the decline of quality in Indian movies will refer to the 1970s as a strong decade and say it's been steadily declining or on some kind of sine wave since then. I think a decline is still plausible though.
One hypothesis that I’ll put out there is not that the films got worse, but that they didn’t change enough, didn't get better by certain metrics, and didn’t “modernize” in the way other film industries did. So, if you look at the mainstream Indian films that played at these fests in the 40s through 60s, they fit in fairly well with what was happening on the world cinema scene. Maybe they had more musical numbers, and were more over the top and melodramatic, but ultimately that was much more acceptable by European film buffs then. The 60s saw a divergence, led by the French New Wave and New Hollywood and other movements with a shift towards more realistic and/or experimental filmmaking across the board, and mainstream Indian movies started to feel too anachronistic in a lineup with the top films from around the world.
Did the Supply of Good Indian Arthouse Movies Decline?
The question of a decline in the quantity of good arthouse films (for lack of a better term) is the most important question of all, because we saw Indian films really fall off the festival radar in the 1990s, which was two decades after mainstream movies were no longer prominently featured at the festivals.
(I don't feel like exploring this further, but it's also plausible that the supply of good arthouse films from the rest of the world increased and thus Indian films faced greater competition.)
Overall the answer to that question is murky, but there are two direct causes of a decrease in arthouse films: the death of Satyajit Ray in 1992, and the semi-retirement of Mrinal Sen around the same time. This doesn’t wholly explain the decline, but it does explain some big part of it. There were 22 total Indian films that played in competition between 1970-1989, and Ray and Sen directed 12 of them! Take them away, and both the 70s and 80s had only five Indian films each playing in competition.
Five films is still a larger number than the three total that played in the 1990s, two that played in the 2000s, and, uh, zero that played in the 2010s, but the decline is way less stark when you take out the two Bengali arthouse icons. If you take Ray out of the 1960s (Sen hadn’t had any films selected in competition yet), the decade's total goes from 16 to 9 films, larger than the subsequent decades but less so if you adjust for a higher quantity of mainstream films being selected in the 60s (there are some genre classification/semantics debates to be had here, but I count around three big mainstream films in the 60s, and there was also one short film and one James Ivory film).
Individual filmmakers really can make a huge difference. Buddhadeb Dasgupta made two of the five non-Ray/Sen films in competition in the 80s, one of the three that played in the 90s, and one of the two that played in the 00s. You can ask why more of his films didn’t make it in (he’s made 12 since his 2000 film played in competition at Venice), why more filmmakers didn’t step up to the plate or simply weren't recognized, etc, but my point is that taking a “great man theory” approach to the decline in Indian films at the fests seems to be a fair line of reasoning.
Semi-Conclusion