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.