Mysuru filmmaker Chidananda S Naik bags Cannes La Cinef first prize
Cannes: In a major triumph for India at the 77th Cannes Film Festival, Chidananda S Naik's Sunflowers Were the First Ones to Know... has won the first prize of La Cinef here.
The Mysuru doctor-turned filmmaker made the film at the end of his one-year course in the television wing of Pune's Film and Television Institute of India.
Sunflowers... is based on Kannada folk tale about an old woman who steals a rooster. As a result of her action, the sun stops rising in the village.
The third prize of the La Cinef competition on Thursday went to India-born Mansi Maheshwari's animation film Bunnyhood.
Maheshwari, born in from Meerut and an ex-student of NIFT Delhi, made the film as a student of UK's National Film and Television School.
The second prize was shared by Out of the Widow Through the Wall, directed by Columbia University's Asya Segalovich, and 'The Chaos She Left Behind'. made by Nikos Kolioukos of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece.
Cannes Film Festival awards a 15000 Euro grant for the first prize winner, 11,250 euros for second prize and 7,500 euros for the third prize.
The awarded films will be screened at the Cinema du Pantheon on June 3 and at the MK2 Quai de Seine on June 4.
The first prize for Naik is India's second in five years. In 2020, Ashmita Guha Neogi, also from FTII, won the award for her film CatDog.
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Congress using hijab issue to pacify minority anger, alleges Karnataka LoP R Ashoka
Bengaluru: Leader of Opposition in the Assembly R. Ashoka has accused the Congress government of using the hijab issue to placate what he described as discontent among minority voters after the Davanagere by-election.
In a post on X on Wednesday, Ashoka alleged that the state government, instead of addressing issues such as price rise, corruption, farmers’ distress and law and order, was attempting to retain its minority vote base by reviving the hijab issue.
Referring to the 2022 dress code introduced by the BJP government, which prohibited hijab in schools and colleges, Ashoka said the Karnataka High Court had upheld the policy and emphasised the importance of discipline in educational institutions.
He questioned the Congress government’s move to revisit the issue and asked whether setting aside the court-backed policy to benefit one community could be described as secularism.
Ashoka further alleged that while the government was willing to permit hijab, it continued to prohibit saffron shawls.
He accused the government of dividing students on religious lines rather than treating schools and colleges as spaces of equality.
Drawing a comparison with Mamata Banerjee’s government in West Bengal, Ashoka claimed that excessive appeasement politics had harmed the state and warned that the Congress in Karnataka could face a similar political response.
He said voters in Karnataka would teach the Congress a lesson for what he termed “vote-bank politics” and for compromising constitutional and judicial principles.
