Indian filmmaker Payal Kapadia’s feature film ”A Night of Knowing Nothing” has been selected as part of the Directors’ Fortnight section at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival, the organisers announced on Tuesday.
According to the official website of the Fortnight section, other features in the 24-strong line-up include Joanna Hogg’s ”The Souvenir Part II”; ”Ali & Ava” by Clio Barnard; ”Futura” by Pietro Marcello; Alice Rohrwacher and Francesco Munzi, and ”Europa” by Haider Rashid.
Kapadia, who divides her time between Mumbai and Paris, is returning to the prestigious European film gala after she took her short film ”Afternoon Clouds” to its 2017 edition.
An Indo-French production, ”A Night of Knowing Nothing” will also be screened at the Marseille Festival of Documentary Film in July.
As per the official website of Marseille festival, the logline of ”A Night of Knowing Nothing” reads: ”L, a university student in India, writes letters to her estranged lover, while he is away. Through these letters, we get a glimpse into the drastic changes taking place around her. Merging reality with fiction, dreams, memories, fantasies and anxieties, an amorphous narrative unfolds.” The film also received backing from the Sundance Institute Documentary Fund Grantees.
Kapadia, who has studied film direction at the Film & Television Institute of India (FTII), also has films such as the documentary ”And What is the Summer Saying” (2018) and ”Last Mango Before the Monsoon”, the 2015 short, to her credit.
Emmanuel Carrere’s ”Ouistreham” (Between Two Worlds) will open the Fortnight section while Rachel Lang’s ”Our Men” will bring down the curtains.
In the short films segment of the Fortnight section, there are nine titles such as ”Anxious Body” by Yoriko Mizushiri, ”El Espacio Sideral” (The Sidereal Space) by Sebastian Schjaer, ”Simone Est Partie” (Simone Is Gone) by Mathilde Chavanne and ”Sycorax” by Lois Patino and Matias Pineiro, among others. The 2021 Cannes Film Festival is scheduled to take place from July 6 to July 17.
