‘Sunflowers Were the First Ones to Know’, a course-end film by Chidanand Naik, a student of the Film and Television Institute of India, received the Cannes’ La Cinef Award for Best Short at the 77th Cannes Film Festival in France.

The winner was officially announced on Thursday at the festival where the student Director Chidanand Naik received the award.

The film has been directed by Chidananda S Naik, shot by Suraj Thakur, edited by Manoj V and sound by Abhishek Kadam.

This is a historic moment for the Indian Cinema. Indian films have been receiving accolades on the international stage, particularly FTII has performed remarkably well at Cannes with its students’ films being screened at the festival in the past few years.

The current recognition comes four years after another FTII student film ‘Catdog’ won an award at the 73rd Cannes. The 77th Cannes Film Festival witnessed multiple entries from India in different categories. Many of the FTII’s alumni such as Payal Kapadia, Maisam Ali, Santosh Sivan, Chidanand S Naik and his team received recognition at this year’s Cannes.

‘Sunflowers Were the First Ones to Know’ is a story of an elderly woman who steals the village's rooster, which throws the community into disarray. To bring the rooster back, a prophecy is invoked, sending the old lady's family into exile.

This FTII film is a production of the TV Wing’s One-year program where four students from different disciplines i.e. Direction, Electronic Cinematography, Editing, and Sound worked together for one project as a year-end coordinated exercise.

This is the first time a film by a student from 1-year Television course of FTII has been selected and won at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival. Before joining FTII in 2022, Chidanand S Naik was also selected as one of the 75 Creative Minds at the 53rd International Film Festival of India, an initiative of the Ministry of I&B to recognize and support budding young artists in the field of Cinema.

‘La Cinef’ is an official section of the festival aimed at encouraging new talents and recognising films from film schools across the world. The film was among 18 shorts selected from a total of 2,263 films submitted by 555 film schools all over the world.