Shaunak Sen’s All That Breathes, which was the only Indian film at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival, will be screened at the upcoming Cannes Film Festival.
The festival organisers announced the official selection on Thursday and Sen’s film is part of the Special Screenings line-up along with Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind by Ethan Coen and The Natural History of Destruction by Sergei Loznitsa.
All That Breathes follows two siblings, Mohammad Saud and Nadeem Shehzad, who have devoted their lives to rescuing and treating injured birds, especially Black Kites. In January, the 90-minute long film won the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize: Documentary at the Sundance Film Festival, a film gala that promotes independent cinema and filmmakers.
Aside from directing it, Sen has also produced the documentary with Aman Mann and Teddy Leifer.
All That Breathes is Sen’s second directorial after the acclaimed 2015 documentary Cities of Sleep, which was about the homeless scouting for places to sleep in Delhi. It too screened at various major film festivals and won six international documentary awards.
The filmmaker is also the recipient of the IDFA Bertha Fund (2019), the Sundance Documentary Grant (2019), the Catapult Film Fund (2020), and the Gucci Tribeca Documentary Fund (2020).
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This year’s edition of the prestigious Cannes Film Festival is returning to the more traditional May 17-28 slot after being moved to July in 2021 due to the pandemic. It will feature films such as Tom Cruise’s Top Gun sequel and an Elvis biopic by Baz Luhrmann, starring Austin Butler and Tom Hanks. Cruise, who had last attended Festival de Cannes three decades ago for Ron Howard’s Far And Away, will also be honoured with a special tribute at the gala.
Apart from these two films, 47 other titles were unveiled as part of the official selection, significantly down from last year’s 83. The Cannes Premiere strand, introduced last year, features just four titles so far, compared to ten in 2021. However, more titles are expected to be announced in the coming days.