Are Film Festivals Rewarding Art or Obedience?

The Hindu

4 hours ago

Published : Jun 24, 2025 13:42 IST - 7 MINS READ
In the polarised world of today, cinema is no longer just about art or entertainment. It has become a potent tool for ideological messaging and image-building by those in power, and for the dissemination of global political narratives. The Iraqi film The President's Cake and the honour it received at the Cannes Film Festival 2025 make this clear: the relationship between cinema and politics is now more intricate and strategic than ever before.
The film tells the story of a 9-year-old girl, Lamia, who is assigned the task of baking a cake for Saddam Hussein's birthday. Through this simple story, director Hassan Hadi not only exposes the harshness of life under a dictatorial regime but also reflects on how a society ends up bowing before authority. This raises an important question: is the international acclaim received by this film purely a result of its artistic merit, or is it part of a larger, calculated political strategy led by the West?
To answer that, we must understand Iraq's history, especially during the rule of Saddam Hussein—a longstanding target of the West. The US attacked Iraq twice: first in 1991 during the Gulf War, and then again in 2003. While these invasions were framed as missions to establish democracy, they led to the deaths of millions and plunged Iraq into decades of instability and chaos.
So, when a film portrays Saddam as a 'villain' and gets honoured on a prestigious platform like Cannes, it is natural to ask about its intent. But while the film starkly portrays the brutality of dictatorship, it also lays bare the fear and suffocation endured by a nation. Hadi made the film in 2023, a time when Iraq was still recovering from the chaos of war. Yet the question lingers: did the film gain such recognition solely for its artistic merits, or is there a deeper political strategy at play here? It's a question worth exploring in detail.
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The President's Cake is not an isolated case. One need not look far back—the Russia-Ukraine war that began in 2022 also dragged cinema into the arena of global political conflict. The Ukrainian documentary20 Days in Mariupol (2023) was championed by the Western media and major international festivals as a powerful act of resistance—a cinematic protest against Russia. This overwhelming support brought it global recognition.
Conversely, Russian films have been blacklisted from the world's most prestigious cinematic forums. Doctor Lisa (2023), though critically acclaimed in Russia, was ignored by festivals like Cannes, Venice, and Toronto. Interestingly, even older Russian films that had once been celebrated in the West, like Leviathan (2014), are now being viewed through a lens of suspicion. Despite criticising the Russian state, Russian directors like Andrey Zvyagintsev (Leviathan, Loveless), Kirill Serebrennikov (Leto, Tchaikovsky's Wife), Kantemir Balagov (Beanpole), or Aleksei Fedorchenko (Silent Souls) have been sidelined by the world movie-watching community in the polarised post-war environment.
Zvyagintsev, once a regular at Cannes and the Oscars, has fallen silent. Serebrennikov faced legal cases in Russia, and when he did attend Cannes, some Western critics labelled him as the 'soft face of Russian culture during wartime'. Balagov moved to the US, but even there, his national identity stood as a barrier. War not only exiled these filmmakers politically but also pushed them into oblivion.
Past precedents
Paradise Now (2005), a film in Arabic and Palestinian languages, tells the story of two young men preparing for a suicide bombing. While Cannes honoured it, the Oscars chose not to nominate it, saying that its approach to terrorism was 'understanding' rather than one of outright condemnation, which is what the American stance was. Similarly, Waltz with Bashir (2008), an Israeli animated documentary about the Lebanon War, was at Cannes and other European festivals, but was kept out of mainstream recognition at awards like the Oscars and the Golden Globes. Its narrative went against the preferred Western framing of Israel as acting in 'self-defence' in declaring war.
French cinema
France, often hailed as the bastion of cinematic freedom, is not immune to hidden political pressures. Michael Haneke's Caché (Hidden) (2005), which exposed France's colonial past, was lauded by critics but ignored by American awards. Bertrand Tavernier's 1992 documentary La Guerre sans Nom, which unflinchingly depicted the horrors of the Algerian War, was also kept away from mainstream spotlight.
Italian Neorealism
In the aftermath of the Second World War, 1940s' Italy gave birth to a cinematic movement that brought the big screen closer to real life by showing the dust of alleyways, the fatigue of workers, the empty pockets of children. This was neorealistic cinema, which had no heroes or villains, only life. Abandoning studio gloss, these films were shot on real streets, with real people. Their rawness created a cinematic echo that could not be ignored—or so one hoped.
The films were sidelined. The Bicycle Thieves and Rome, Open City may have won audiences' hearts, but at Cannes, Berlin, and the Oscars, their presence remained marginal. These films revealed realities the powerful preferred not to see. Vittorio De Sica's The Bicycle Thieves (1948) received multiple international awards, including Best Film at the BAFTAs and the Volpi Cup, but as Italian cinema began critiquing fascism, capitalism, and social inequality, it was relegated to 'arthouse' or 'foreign language' categories.
Pier Paolo Pasolini's The 120 Days of Sodom (1975) was banned and labelled obscene—not because of its form, but because it posed a threat to entrenched power structures. It was sidelined not only in Italy but also across many Western platforms.
African cinema
African cinema has fearlessly portrayed racism, colonialism, and the brutality of power. Yet it has been consistently sidelined on prestigious international platforms. Ousmane Sembène's Black Girl (1966) exposed colonial and racial exploitation. While it was appreciated at smaller European and American festivals, it was largely ignored by the major awards.
Abderrahmane Sissako's Timbuktu (2014) addressed Western terrorism and Islamic extremism. It received an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film but many other African cinematic milestones—like Cairo Station (1958) and Yeelen (1987)—were excluded from global recognition. Once again, the deciding factor was the political lens—only narratives aligned with Western interests were amplified.
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Back home in India, a new kind of cinema is emerging where the hero is declared, the villain predefined, and the story flows around the corridors of power. The Tricolor flutters, the national anthem echoes, and the camera cuts straight to the heart of the masses. These are the propaganda movies that uphold the narratives of faux patriotism, pride, or valour that are peddled by the present regime to the people. One of them, The Kashmir Files, was hailed as 'essential cinema' in political circles and quickly made tax-free. These films do not just tell stories, they set moods—moods where questions are unwelcome, and pride is non-negotiable. The movies that do not fit into this narrative are either labelled controversial before release, or quietly buried in obscure OTT corners.
While films like The President's Cake and The Kashmir Files may have hidden agendas, there is a crucial difference between the two. In India, the state often sits behind the camera—director, producer, and financier rolled into one. Artists who question the films are labelled as anti-national, agenda-driven, and dismissed. In contrast, as discussed earlier, The President's Cake also problematises the narrative subtly by showing the devastations of war.
Today, every film opens with the disclaimer 'This is a work of fiction'. The question is—is it just fiction, or the curated truth? Cinema is no longer just about storytelling—it is scripting an official history. And in that history, only those who fit the ruling script get screen time.
Zeb Akhtar, a former research scholar with the Ministry of Culture and Makhanlal Chaturvedi National University of Journalism, is presently working on a research project exploring the hidden agendas behind global film awards and festivals.