kolkata payal kapadias a night of knowing nothing which won the oeil dor golden eye award for best documentary at this years cannes film festival has a strong kolkata connection ranabir das a former student of don bosco park circus and the documentarys cinematographer and editor has walked the cannes red carpet alongside the directormoinak bose a former student of scottish church college and st xaviers collegiate school is the films sound designer while gobardangas theatre actor bhumisuta das has done its voice over kapadia ranabir and bose are alumni of the film and television institute of india while bhumisuta graduated from the national school of drama in 2019bhumisuta dasamong the cinematographers from bengal who inspired das are subrata mitra and soumendu roy besides he is also inspired by the photography in all ritwik ghatak films ranjan palit and avik mukhopadhyay i have observed avik da work and there so much to learn even beyond creating beautiful images that includes the way he collaborates with the directors and conducts himself on set quietly and efficiently going about his work he saiddescribed by the director as a found footage film the documentary was screened as part of the directors fortnight section which runs alongside the main festival in the documentary l a university student in india writes letters to her estranged lover while he is away through these letters we get a glimpse into the drastic changes taking place around her merging reality with fiction dreams memories fantasies and anxieties an amorphous narrative unfoldswhile i did shoot a lot of the film we also received a lot of footage from friends and other archives so in a way it became a found footage film we even treated the footage shot by payal and me as found footage we shot our friends and our daily lives so it was perhaps easier for us to be more intimate than in other situations we spent most of the pandemic editing the film in our apartment as we had a lot of footage it took a long time das saidwith the material they had it became very important for them to choose the form they wanted to give to the documentarywe had in mind what we wanted to express which was what many of us who had the privilege of going to public university were feeling we decided it was best to use the unsent letters throughout the film which would lend a personal touch to the very complicated situations we found ourselves in he addeddescribing his cannes experience ranabir said more than the red carpet just being at the festival was such a great experience more so after months of restricted movement it is great to get to watch the films of the masters i have idolized and so many exciting new filmmakers what is more special is to present your film to an audience that is so appreciative and hungry for cinemaranabirs parents still live in kolkata director anik dutta took to facebook