Exclusive! Shaunak Sen after bagging L'Oeil d'or at Cannes 2022: I’m drawn to the coexistence of beauty and brutality

Shaunak Sen’s All that Breathes won the L'Oeil d'or (Golden Eye) award for best documentary at the 75th Cannes Film Festival this year. Soon after the award was announced, Shaunak and his team travelled to another festival, Docaviv – the Tel Aviv International Documentary Film Festival – for the film’s next screening. While talking exclusively to OTTPlay, Shaunak said, “We have been travelling to festivals extensively and this schedule may go on for another month before we return home.” 

Speaking about receiving the prestigious L'Oeil d'or, the docu-maker said, “We are beside ourselves with joy, and have barely processed it. Not least because some masters were showing in the same/aligned categories, and it was an honour to show (our film) beside them. This was an unusually difficult film to make, taking over three years and alongside deep personal losses for the crew. We're thrilled that the film (and the astonishing story of the protagonists) is getting these honours.” 

The documentary has been bought by HBO and will be available for the global audience to watch by the end of this year. While talking about the non-fiction work in this country, Shaunak said, “India has a phenomenally conducive atmosphere in finding stories to tell. Any place that inherits contradictions brims with stories. I am particularly drawn to the coexistence of beauty and brutality. It is rather astonishing that not more documentaries are being made. Of course, in the last year and a half, the Indian non-fiction format has done exceptionally well. Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh’s Writing With Fire received a nomination at the Academy Awards for the Best Documentary Feature. Payal Kapadia’s A Night of Knowing Nothing won the Golden Eye at the Cannes last year. Some very important documentaries were made earlier also. With a greater infrastructure and viewership in India, more non-fiction work will take place. I think there is genuine hunger and curiosity among us. Things are looking more and more promising and I am cautiously optimistic about our non-fiction projects.”

Shaunak is keen to work on fiction -- especially adaptation of literary work. "I am not at the liberty to talk about anythink now. But I am keen to work on fiction," he said.