Cannes Film Festival

Anurag Kashyap

With Kashyap’s film premiering at the upcoming ‘Festival de Cannes 2016’ (69 th Cannes Film Festival, May 11 to May 22) in a sidebar event, the Directors Fortnight, Indian social media went into a tizzy over the news.

“Raman Raghav 2.0 to premiere at Cannes Directors Fortnight. Congratulations team.” That’s how Anurag Kashyap, the internationally famous Indian film director, producer and screen writer broke the news on April 19, 2016, on social media about his next psychological- thriller getting featured at the Cannes Film Festival 2016, in the Directors Fortnight section.

“Raman Raghav 2.0” is a story of a notorious killer Raghav Raman set in the era of 1960s Mumbai (central India). It stars the critically acclaimed Indian actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui who has in the past featured in films such as “Gangs of Wasseypur” (2012) by Anurag Kashyap, “The Lunch Box” (2013) and “Bombay Talkies”, again by Anurag Kashyap (2013) to name a few – all of which have been premiered at Cannes, where the first two even received the standing ovation at the festival. Kashyap’s new film also features Vicky Kaushal of “Masaan“ (2015) fame as a Mumbai police officer.

Though this year no Indian film has made it to the competition or to the Un Certain Regard sections, unlike last year when Neeraj Ghaywan’s “Masaan” made it to Un Certain Regard, Indian film fraternity is delighted to at least have some presence at the prestigious festival. In fact many actors from the industry were confident of “Raman Raghav” making it to the Cannes, as Shweta Tripathi, 30, – who played a crucial character of Shaalu Gupta, an upper caste girl who falls for a low-caste boy in “Masaan” – told Media India Group: “Anurag Kashyap’s ‘Raman Raghav’ should make it to Cannes. I have read the script and I think is absolutely brilliant. It totally deserves to be at the festival.”

She was all praise for the director and added, “Anurag is one director I would live to work with and plus the film has Nawaz and Vicky, my co-actors from the last films, so I really hope and wish that it makes it to Cannes.”

With only a few days left for the festival to begin, it would be interesting to see what kind of response the film generates, which is set for its India release on May 27, 2016, immediately after the festival.