A moment of pride for India has arrived at the 77th Cannes Film Festival as Chidananda S Naik’s Sunflowers Were the First Ones to Know won the first prize of La Cinef. 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. The film is based on a Kannada folk tale about an old woman who steals a rooster. As a result of her action, the son 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.

Speaking to Variety, Naik said, “We had only four days. I was basically told not to make this film. It’s based on folklore from Karnataka [in India]. These are the stories we grew up with, so I was carrying this idea since my childhood.

For the 27th edition, La Cinef selected 18 shorts, 14 live-action and 4 animated shorts from 2,263 selections from film schools all over the world. 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 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 in Greece.

For the unversed, 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.

(With PTI inputs)

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