Cannes Lions 2023: A reluctant (former) advertising filmmaker’s first time at the festival

For the uninitiated… I am a filmmaker working in advertising, based in Mumbai.

 

I chanced upon advertising a little over a decade ago. This Madurai boy moved to Mumbai to make films. Which is why unlike most advertising professionals, winning a Lion at Cannes wasn’t something that was much of a dream. My first brush with the festival happened in 2018, when a seemingly tiny, fun campaign called 'Voice of Hunger' we did for Swiggy blew up.

 

And the team led by PG Aditiya(then Webchutney, now talented) began seeing a glimmer of hope for their first real shot at a Lion. Most people including me were a tad bit cynical because until that year, most winners from countries like ours were campaigns for a cause. But we know who was wrong because come Cannes 2019, 'Voice of Hunger' won three Lions. 

 

Cut to June 2022: A campaign we worked on for Vice News called ‘The Unfiltered History Tour’ became the most internationally awarded campaign in Indian advertising history. It even got me listed on the Cannes creative rankings 2022 on number one as ‘director of the year’.

 

A list that made me feel like an absolute imposter because a lot of filmmakers whose work I admire were on the list but below me. This was one of the only pieces of my own work in advertising that I own up to. Unfortunately for most people on the team that made that win possible, we couldn’t make it to the festival. The realist in me isn’t sure if you go on stage at the Lumiere theatre in Cannes to receive a Titanium and three Grand Prix more than once in a lifetime. 

Cut to November 2022: I receive an email from Malcolm Raphael of the Times group asking if I would be interested in being nominated to be part of the Cannes Lion Jury in the Film Craft category for 2023. Ofcourse! 

 

This also meant I was going to be attending the festival in person for the very first time. I was as excited as I was nervous. What better way to do your first time than to be on the jury and also have an entry that was in competition. 

 

So my Cannes 2023 experience began in May while judging from home. I had to watch 250+ amazing films from across the world in less than a month while still making films for a living. I knew what credibility being a ‘Cannes winner’ brought with it. Which was why I took some time off from Mumbai to give the judging process the time and attention it would need. I was to be judging the categories for ‘Editing’ and ‘Use of Original Music’. Some absolutely inspiring work across relatively unheard of brands to the biggies like Apple and Coke.

 

Cut to June 2023: Visa in. Tickets booked. And we are off to the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity 2023. I couldn’t have asked for better company on my first time at the festival than the creative team I work the most with, the folks from talented. 

 

Enough with the linear timeline. Let’s get to the things that stuck with me. People I met, things I learnt, sessions that struck a chord and so on.

 

The first thing that struck me was very few people attend the festival ‘alone’. Most attendees were from agencies and brands that would ‘hunt in packs’. But some of these ‘packs’ were nice enough to adopt a nervous first timer like myself. You know who you are.

 

The awards on Day 1 made me feel things I didn’t think I would. Being at THE Lumiere theatre watching the best work in advertising being awarded and cheered for was something else. It made me feel for the first time to want to win. To watch such stellar pieces of work screened before being awarded made me feel worse for not having been there the previous year when our work for Vice played almost every night at the awards. 

 

I attended a few sessions and workshops between the awards and taking meetings with potential future collaborators. No prizes for guessing what a lot of the session were about.. AI. I promptly stayed away from most of them. I couldn’t have worded my opinions better that Guillermo Del Toro recently did in an interview, “I don’t fear Artificial Intelligence, I fear natural stupidity.”  

 

My favourite session without a doubt was by Mike White, the creator of The White Lotus. Liz Taylor (global CCO, Ogilvy) brought out the most vulnerable and profound insights in just under 30 minutes from a man who has been around well over a couple of decades but only tasted unprecedented love and success with his latest outing. Most of the sessions were 30 minutes long (or short) which meant the speakers could only manage to get you into something, only for it to end abruptly. 

 

 

The biggest takeaway for me from the festival was seeing how the case study is as important as the piece of work itself. Maybe even more important in some cases. For a diverse audience, explaining the context before getting to the insight and its application becomes crucial. A lot of the nuances we take for granted in pieces of work specifically from our own regions may need to be explained to a global audience. Which is why even a great campaign with a middling case study won’t cut it. You need your case study to land a knockout punch to stop itself from killing a good thing in the jury rooms. And it is amusing to see how most Indian agencies rarely hire advertising directors to make these case studies. It is usually put together by the creatives at the agency with the help of inhouse videographers and editors. This is probably also because most directors do think of the case study as a lesser form of filmmaking. And most filmmakers making these case studies are usually doing it as a favour to their agency partners. Which is never a good place to be in. This will have to change if we want to see India’s award tally go up at international festivals.   

 

There were a bunch of great films from India in the categories I was judging that didn’t make it to the shortlists. I am pretty sure this happened because of the entries in the film craft categories not sending in cases for their films. But a lot of the ones that won, had great cases. Were they necessary to highlight why the work was great? I don’t know. Did it help them win? 100%.

 

I am sure there are better platforms and people more equipped to critique and debate the best work from the last year which is why I stuck to my experience at the festival.

 

Funnily enough, being at Cannes only made me more comfortable with myself. To have met filmmakers like Ricardo Maldonado who made the highest grossing Peruvian film of all time, went to university to study behavioural science at the age of 47 and still wants to stick to advertising. And another one much closer to home, Amit Sharma who despite having made a niche for himself in the mainstream Hindi film industry told me he would never stop making films for advertising. It seems like once you have tasted blood making a different kind of film every other month, there’s no going back. 

 

I know I am repeating myself, but I couldn’t have asked for a juicier first time than this one. To have come in with a piece of work from last year that everyone I met recognised, to have been on the jury, to have also had a campaign I worked on to be in competition and even win a couple of Lions! ‘Cannes’ not wait to be back. 

 

(The author is a freelance director who was among the Film Craft jurors at Cannes Lions 2023.)