Cannes 2023: Manipuri classic Ishanou to premiere today at film festival

Manipuri film Ishanou (The Chosen One) will be premiering today at the 76th Cannes Film Festival. The movie will  premiere under the Cannes Classics section of the festival. With this, Ishanou becomes the only Indian movie this year to be screened in the Classics category, which celebrates restored old films.

Film Heritage Foundation restored the movie with the help of director Aribam Syam Sharma, and the Manipur State Film Development Society. The restoration work on the film was done in the Prasad Corporation Pvt. Ltd.'s Post-Studios in Chennai and the L'Immagine Ritrovata lab in Bologna. Sharma monitored the colour grading procedure in order to digitise the audio from the 35mm acetate print. The restoration was done with support from Susan Harmon and Dr Richard Meyer.

The restoration process was complex and required a whole year to complete. When examined by conservators from the Film Heritage Foundation, the negative showed vinegar syndrome degradation on some reels, mould and warping, broken perforations, scratches, halos on the emulsion, and base distortion. The use of inter-negative in the original camera negative presented another difficulty, because it caused significant changes in the image quality. This made some areas of the image exceedingly grainy and out of sync with the rest of the film. 

More about Ishanou

The story of Ishanou revolves around Tampha, a young woman with a devoted husband and a young daughter. She lives in the valley of Manipur. Usually preoccupied with mundane matters of daily life, Tampha suddenly starts acting strangely - she starts talking to flowers, having dizzy spells, and leaving the house in the middle of the night. Later, she and her family realise that she is answering the call of a divine spirit who has chosen her. The film features Anoubam Kiranmala, Kangabam Tomba, Baby Molly, Manbi, Soraisam Dhiren and Baby Premita in major roles. The story, screenplay and costumes are by M. K. Binodini Devi. Ishanou was first released in the year 1990 and was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival.