Bollywood multi-hyphenate Karan Johar is looking back at his association with the Cannes Film Festival. The filmmaker recently attended a special session at the Bharat Pavilion in the Cannes Film Festival where he spoke about his history at the festival.
He spoke about visiting the Cannes Film Festival for the first time with his father Yash Johar, and how they made a start at the prestigious film festival with their film ‘Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham’ which was sold for $5,000 at the Cannes Film Market.
Karan, whose production ‘Homebound’ has been selected in the Un Certain Regard segment at Cannes, said, “I have a lot of emotional memories related to Cannes. I remember the year 2002, when my father and I were here at the Cannes market”.
KJo remembered his father striking a deal, which he thought at that time was quite less. “I told him, ‘This seems like it's really not of any consequence’. Because I remember he sold the European rights of ‘Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham’ for $5,000. And at that time, I was like, ‘$5,000, isn't that very little?’ And he said, ‘Look, it's a start, we have to see it’. And unfortunately, he wasn't alive to see the massive impact that our cinema, that began from ‘Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham’ went on to all of Shah Rukh Khan's movies”, he shared.
KJo further mentioned that the move created a huge cultural movement for our cinema in Europe. He said, “I remember it began in the year 2002, it was also the year that ‘Devdas’ had a beautiful screening, and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Shah Rukh were on the red carpet. And Aishwarya Rai Bachchan is literally the queen of Cannes. Like, every time she's here, she creates such a huge amount of media energy and excitement. And she's here again. So it's just wonderful that I remember that so clearly”.
Bharat Pavilion at Cannes Film Festival saw a series of interesting sessions around cinema today. The Bharat Pavilion organised by NFDC and FICCI under the aegis of Ministry of Information & Broadcasting, Government of India.
“Then I came back to the capacity of a filmmaker, when we were selected the director's fortnight in 2013, for the anthology, Bombay Talkies, with Anurag Kashyap, Zoya Akhtar, Divakar Banerjee, myself. And it was that particular year that I met Guneet Monga. And, you know, I saw ‘The Lunchbox’, which was actually doing so phenomenally and getting so much love. And I decided to present the film in Hindi to our audiences in India. And so I have so many beautiful memories”, he added.