Skip to main content

OH TO BE A MALLU AT CANNES!


Kerala is indeed God’s own country and  Malayalis are indeed God’s chosen people. Kerala is India’s most educated state and arguably its wealthiest. It’s a land steeped in rich culture and India’s shining symbol of progressivism. Kerala did us proud at the most prestigious Cannes Film Festival. It didn’t have to put up a parade of outlandishly dressed aging divas. All it needed was to showcase its people and their talent.

“Less than 3% of Indians speak Malayalam. But to many who attended the 77th Cannes International Film Festival in the French Riviera this year, Malayalam may have appeared to be India’s lingua franca. Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine as Light, the first Indian film ever to win the Grand Prix at the festival, speaks mostly in Malayalam. Praised as lyrical and delicate, the film is about the life and dreams of two young nurses from Kerala in Mumbai. It is also the first film from India to have been selected to compete at the prestigious festival for the Palme d’Or after three decades. The last Indian film that competed for the top prize was Swaham in Malayalam which was made by Shaji N. Karun in 1994. The Malayali’s cup of happiness at Cannes overflowed this year when the ace cinematographer, Santosh Sivan, became the first Asian to receive the Pierre Angénieux Excellens in Cinematography award instituted after the French inventor of the modern zoom lenses. Receiving the honour at the Palais de Festival, Sivan thanked Kerala and Malayalam cinema for everything he achieved.

Kani Kusruti and Divya Prabha, the heroines of All We Imagine as Light, and Sivan bring further cheer to the Malayalam film industry at a time when it is on a dream run. Smallest in the South Indian film industry until recently, Malayalam cinema has emerged as the highest-grosser in the country after Hindi and Telugu movies in this year’s first four months. For the first time in Indian cinema’s history, Malayalam films have topped the country in monthly gross revenue in February and March, says Ormax Media, a box office tracking site. Although Malayalam cinema has had a long and glittering tradition in India’s art film circuit, such recurring commercial success has been unprecedented.

Mohan Guruswamy 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Helen Mirren once said: Before you argue with someone, ask yourself.......

Helen Mirren once said: Before you argue with someone, ask yourself, is that person even mentally mature enough to grasp the concept of a different perspective. Because if not, there's absolutely no point. Not every argument is worth your energy. Sometimes, no matter how clearly you express yourself, the other person isn’t listening to understand—they’re listening to react. They’re stuck in their own perspective, unwilling to consider another viewpoint, and engaging with them only drains you. There’s a difference between a healthy discussion and a pointless debate. A conversation with someone who is open-minded, who values growth and understanding, can be enlightening—even if you don’t agree. But trying to reason with someone who refuses to see beyond their own beliefs? That’s like talking to a wall. No matter how much logic or truth you present, they will twist, deflect, or dismiss your words, not because you’re wrong, but because they’re unwilling to see another side. Maturity is...
Post a Comment
Read more

The battle against caste: Phule and Periyar's indomitable legacy

In the annals of India's social reform, two luminaries stand preeminent: Jotirao Phule and E.V. Ramasamy, colloquially known as Periyar. Their endeavours, ensconced in the 19th and 20th centuries, continue to sculpt the contemporary struggle against the entrenched caste system. Phule's educational renaissance Phule, born in 1827, was an intellectual vanguard who perceived education as the ultimate equaliser. He inaugurated the inaugural school for girls from lower castes in Pune, subverting the Brahminical hegemony that had long monopolized erudition. His Satyashodhak Samaj endeavoured to obliterate caste hierarchies through radical social reform. His magnum opus, "Gulamgiri" (Slavery), delineated poignant parallels between India's caste system and the subjugation of African-Americans, igniting a discourse on caste as an apparatus of servitude. Periyar's rationalist odyssey Periyar, born in 1879, assumed the mantle of social reform through the Dravidian moveme...
Post a Comment
Read more

AI & Higher Education: The Empty Classroom

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE & HIGHER EDUCATION The Empty Classroom When students outsource learning to AI and companies cut the engineers who know better, both ends of the talent pipeline fray at once. India is not watching from a safe distance. Chuppala Nagesh Bhushan At the University of California, Berkeley, something unremarkable happened in spring 2026: a professor held office hours. The unremarkable part was that nobody came. Dan Garcia, who teaches CS 10, a broad introductory computing course popularly called “The Beauty and Joy of Computing,” found his calendar conspicuously clear at the very moment his gradebook became conspicuously alarming. Of the students who sat CS 10’s final examination, 35.3% received an F—five times the historical norm of roughly 7%. Two other courses in Berkeley’s elite Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences department suffered similarly: 10.6% of CS 61A students failed, and 16.8% of those in EECS 127, an upper-division optimi...
1 comment
Read more