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As we follow L, and her letters to her estranged lover, we go on a journey through memories and dreamlike exploration of emotions, and political and social disruptions in India.
Nominated for Editing
Nominated for Directing
Nominated for Sound
Nominated for Cinematography
Original Title: A Night of Knowing Nothing Director: Payal Kapadia Country: France & India Year: 2021 Duration: 96 min Producers: Ranabir Das, Julienne Graf & Thomas Hakim

SPECIAL SCREENING: 15th of October (9 PM): Introduction by festival director for HUMAN International Film Festival, Ketil Magnussen.

Caste, class and religion regulate love in India but also hugely determine politics. L, a female student of the Film and Television Institute of India is writing letters to her secret lover who never answers them. Her letters not only convey her frustrations about him but also describe the growing Hindu nationalistic, repressive and volatile political climate students all around India are trying to fight. A Night of Knowing Nothing mixes dreams, fiction, memories, anxieties and fantasies into an hallucinant and nightmarish contemporary essay about the loss of innocence and an India that does not aim to be a fair, open and an inclusive society.

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Payal Kapadia is best known for having won the Golden Eye award for best documentary film at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival for A Night of Knowing Nothing. In 2017, her film Afternoon Clouds was the only Indian film that was selected for the 70th Cannes Film Festival.

Payal Kapadia, born in Mumbai won the “Golden Eye” award for the best documentary film at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival. In 2017, she made the only Indian film selected for the 70th Cannes Film Festival. After her bachelor’s degree in economics Payal Kapadia went on to study film direction at the Film and Television Institute of India. Awarded with several awards, she is known for her abstract storytelling and documentation.

“Storytelling in India has been used as a tool of transference to calm the listener's anxious heart. Here, the two women become the characters of the story they would like to hear, and for this brief moment, are free of the world they belong to through a collective dream”

Filmography

Afternoon Clouds (2017)
And What is the Summer Saying (2018)