Payal Kapadia's A Night Of Knowing Nothing wins documentary grand prix at Cannes

Director Payal Kapadia's A Night Of Knowing Nothing has been awarded the grand prize for Best Documentary at the Cannes Festival.

The film was presented with the Oeil d'Or or Golden Eye award, which carries a cash award of €5,000 (approximately Rs4.4 lakh).

Ukrainian filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa's documentary Babi Yar got a special mention.

Kapadia's film was running in the Directors' Fortnight section of the festival.

According to its synopsis, the film is about a university student in India who writes letters to her estranged lover while he is away. Through these letters, we get a glimpse into the drastic changes taking place around her. 'Merging reality with fiction, dreams, memories, fantasies and anxieties, an amorphous narrative unfolds.'

The film is also in contention for the Camera d'Or or Golden Camera, which is presented to the Best Director.

L'Œil d'Or is an award set up in 2015 by the Civil Society of Multimedia Authors (known by its French acronym SCAM) to be awarded to the best documentary presented in any of the sections (Official Selection, Cannes Classics, Directors' Fortnight and International Critics' Week) at Cannes.

The only other time an Indian film was in contention for this award was 2016, when Amit Madheshiya and Shirley Abraham's The Cinema Travellers got a special mention.

A graduate of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Kapadia has previously visited Cannes with her short film, Afternoon Clouds. She has another project, All We Imagine As Light, supported by Ciclic Animation and Hubert Bals Fund, currently in development.