Payal Kapadia, the student from Film and Television Institute of India, who faced disciplinary action for protesting against the appointment of Gajendra Chahuhan as the Chairman of the institute few years ago, won the Golden eye award for best documentary at Cannes Film Festival few days ago.
Kapadia’s success has become talk of the town given the fact that she not only faced disciplinary action from the institution, but the unwillingness on Cannes’s part to accept Kapadia’s short film in 2015 on similar charges of indiscipline.
Her win was lauded on Twitter by the likes of comic Varun Grover, actor Swara Bhaskar, Vishal Bharadwaj and others. Many other tweets were addressed to Gajendra Chauhan in an attempt to mockingly berate him.
Kapadia alongside her batch mates protested against Gajendra Chauhan’s appointment in 2015 as they were apprehensive about the right-wing tilt the University would be compelled to make under his stewardship. She led a protest against his appointment and boycotted classes for four months to express her contempt for the right-wing brigade.
The appointment was criticized by well-known actors like Kalki Koechlin, Resul Pookutty, Anupam Kher and other respectable members of the film fraternity. Payal’s current win for the best documentary is said to be inspired by her tryst with activism and the protest culture she encouraged. Her documentary is titled ‘A Night of Knowing Nothing.’