Cannes 2012: One nomination for India in Films

The film 'I Am Mumbai' for Mumbai Mirror, created by Taproot India's Santosh Padhi and Agnello Dias, and film maker Abhinay Deo has won a nomination in Film - the sole for India.

Immediately after Josy Paul presented the 'I Am Mumbai' film at Debussy Auditorium in Cannes, came the announcement of it being nominated in the Film Lions category. Paul had selected the film to be aired in the BBDO session, which had top BBDO creative heads from different parts of the world airing a marvellous piece of work from their individual countries.

If the audience was the jury, the film got a huge round of applause. Now, it's for the jury to decide whether this one deserves a Lion - gold, silver or a bronze.

The specialty of the film was that the film was shot in the streets of Mumbai, with a cast which had never faced the camera before. Even the cast did not know about the placement of camera. The crowd around the cast comprised normal people who were caught unawares, so their expressions were real, too. What's interesting was that the cast was only made to attend a two-day workshop to discuss certain problems in order to bring out the angst on camera.

The thought behind the campaign is that in a city where the ordinary guy can feel rather helpless and is at the receiving end of an insensitive system, the paper empowers the reader and gives him/her a voice.

An excited Santosh Padhi, co-chief creative officer, Taproot, shares, "If someone explains the film to the jury in such details, we are sure to score big."