Filmmaker's Rohena Gera's first feature film, Sir, will screen in competition at the Cannes Film Festival’s Critics’ Week, held from 9 to 17 May.
Sir stars Tillotama Shome and is a romance between an upper-class man and his housekeeper. Geetanjali Kulkarni, Rahul Vohra, Vivek Gomber and Ahmareen Anjum are also a part of the cast.
The film will be competing against Anja Kofmel's Chris The Swiss, Gabriel Abrantes and Daniel Schmidt's Diamantino, Zsófia Szilágyi's One Day, Agnieszka SmoczyÅÂska's Fugue, Benedikt Erlingsson's Woman At War, and Camille Vidal-Naquet's Sauvage.
Actor-turned-filmmaker from America Paul Dano’s Wildfire will open the parallel section. Starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Carey Mulligan, Wildfire premiered at the Sundance Film Festival this past January.
Critics’ Week usually shows promising filmmakers' first and second films. The section's artistic director, Charles Tesson, and the committe chose these films from around 1,100 submissions. Tesson said of Gera's film that it "says something deep and meaningful about the middle and upper class in India through a tale of an impossible love."
Gera is one of the four women in the official competition section. She is credited to have written the story for her former husband Rohan Sippy's film, Kuch Naa Kaho (2003), and the screenplay of Thoda Pyaar Thoda Magic (2008).
She was also a writer on the television series Jassi Jaissi Koi Nahin. Her first film as a director was a documentary on arranged marriages, What's Love Got To Do With It? (2013).
Alex Lutz's Guy will be the closing film at the 57th edition of the Critics' Week, while Guillaume Senez's Our Struggles and Jean-Bernard Marlin's Shéhérazade will have special screenings.