7 Facts About Payal Kapadia, Mumbai-Based Filmmaker Who Won Best Documentary Award At Cannes 2021

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Payal Kapadia, a Mumbai-based filmmaker has made India proud by winning the prestigious Oeil d'Or (Golden Eye) award for the Best-Documentary at the Cannes Film Festival. She won the award for her film A Night of Knowing Nothing.

Her film was one of the 28 documentaries exhibited during the festival in several divisions. It was her first feature film and it made an entry at the festival's Director's Fortnight, running parallel to the festival.

Kapadia's film competed against Todd Haynes' The Velvet Underground, Oliver Stone's JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass, Sergei Loznitsa's Babi Yar. Context, Andrea Arnold's Cow, Marco Bellocchio's Marx Can Wait, Mark Cousins' The Story of Film: A New Generation and Rahul Jain's Invisible Demons, and many others.

Here are a few interesting things about the documentary filmmaker Payal Kapadia:

1. Payal Kapadia is a Mumbai-based filmmaker who went to the Film & Television Institute of India in Pune to study film direction.

2. According to Kapadia, her work focusses on the "folds of memories and dreams" and something which may not be clearly evident. She tries to make films with "small, fleeting feminine gestures where she seeks to reach the truth".

3. At Cinefondation - Cannes Film Festival 2017, Paya Kapadia's first film, Afternoon Cloud, made an entry, making her the only Indian to compete in the festival.

4. Her experimental documentary, And What is the Summer Saying, made its golden premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival 2018.

5. The film later on went on to win the Special Jury Prize at the Amsterdam International Documentary Film Festival in 2018.

6. In 2019, the talented filmmaker was chosen for the Cinefondation Cannes Residency as well as Berlinale Talents Program.

7. At present, Kapadia is working on All We Imagine as Light. She has shot the film at the PJLF Three Rivers Residency in Rome.

This proud achievement of Payal Kapadia was announced through Quinzaine des Real, the Twitter account of Cannes Independent movie selection.

The tweet read, "The Oeil d'Or, the award for best documentary presented at the Cannes Film Festival all sections combined, goes to A NIGHT OF KNOWING NOTHING by Payal Kapadia, a film selected at the Directors' Fortnight. Our warmest congratulations to Payal Kapadia and the entire film crew!"

The judgement was made by the five-member jury. The jury included French filmmaker Julie Bertuccelli, French actor Deborah Francois, Franco-American film critic Iris Brey and Orwa Nyrabia, artistic director of the International Documentary Film Festival (IDFA) Amsterdam. The jury was headed by Ezra Edelman, the American documentary producer.