The Cannes Film Festival has, for several years now, been used by Indian movie makers as a platform for promoting their projects.
This time around, Chennai’s Thenandal Pictures is pushing its ambitious still-on-the-drawing-board Sangamithra at Cannes. Shruti Haasan will play the title role along with Arya and Jayam Ravi.
The work will be shot in two languages, Tamil and Telugu. And as the director, Sundar C, told this writer during an interview here on Friday, “Sangamithra would be as fantastic as Baahubali”. This, just released film, appears to have become a yardstick for others to set their standards.
And Thenandal Pictures is thinking really big — even spending a reported 60,000 Euros to co-host the opening night Market Party at Cannes on May 18 — where Sundar, Haasan, Ravi, Arya, AR Rahman and others were presented to an international gathering.
Sangamithra is one among the many that has chosen Cannes to begin its PR exercise.Many summers ago, Shekhar Kapur came to Cannes and announced to the media that he was embarking on an ambitious movie called Paani. “The future wars in this world would be fought for water, a precious commodity that was fast vanishing.”
But much like water that is disappearing, Kapur’s Paani too appears have to faded into oblivion. Nothing much has happened since that morning at Cannes when Kapur was all set to start his battle royale.
