Filmmaker Payal Kapadia has won the best documentary award at the 74th Cannes Film Festival for her film A Night of Knowing Nothing. Kapadia’s international recognition came six years after she was hounded by the Film and Television Institute of India for staging protests against the appointment of Gajendra Chauhan as the premier institute’s chairman. Kapadia’s success also prompted the Oscar-winning sound Sound Engineer Resul Pookutty to share a moving personal anecdote.
Reacting to Kapadia’s achievement, the Indian embassy in France tweeted, “Indian film A Night of Knowing Nothing, highlighting life of university students wins prestigious Oeil d’or(Golden Eye) award for best documentary @Festival_Cannes;Congratulations to Payal Kapadia& FTII; more vigour India-France & @FTIIOfficial- @lafemisparis cooperation in Films (sic).”
In 2015, Kapadia had led a four-month protest against the appointment of actor-turned-politician Chauhan against his appointment as the chairman of the FTTI. She had to face disciplinary action and had her grant cut for her role in the protests.
Resul Pookutty said that students must continue to remain as the conscience keepers of the masses as he wrote, “I was denied my meager Rs.500/- scholarship by #I&BMinistry for protesting privatisation in my final year.I was heartbroken then,for that was my only source, rest U all know. So students,be the conscience keepers of this vast, wide &diverse nation.The universe will conspire.”
I was denied my meager Rs.500/- scholarship by #I&BMinistry for protesting privatisation in my final year.I was heartbroken then,for that was my only source, rest U all know. So students,be the conscience keepers of this vast, wide &diverse nation.The universe will conspire. https://t.co/P87t2x2ilu
— resul pookutty (@resulp) July 20, 2021
Kapadia’s earlier works have included And What is the Summer Saying (2018), Afternoon Clouds (2017) and The Last Mango Before the Monsoon (2015).
According to news agency PTI, Kapadia’s film A Night of Knowing Nothing was competing for the award against Todd Haynes’ The Velvet Underground, Andrea Arnold’s Cow, Oliver Stone’s JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass, Marco Bellocchio’s Marx Can Wait, Sergei Loznitsa’s Babi Yar. Context, Mark Cousins’s The Story of Film: A New Generation and Rahul Jain’s Invisible Demons, among others.
Kapadia’s A Night of Knowing Nothing is believed to have been inspired from her own days of being an activist.