Beyond the red carpet: How regional cinema is finally getting a seat at Cannes 2026

For decades, India’s presence at the Cannes Film Festival meant one thing: a Bollywood star in a designer saree, a brand deal with L’Oréal, and a photograph on the Croisette that made the front pages back home. That story hasn’t gone away. But something else is happening alongside it, something more significant, and far less photographed.

At the 79th Cannes Film Festival, running from May 12 to May 23, India has arrived as many industries, not one.

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The number that says everything

Start with the box office, because the box office tells you where power actually sits.

In 2024, Hindi cinema’s share of India’s domestic box office fell to 40 percent, its lowest in years. Regional films collectively took 60 percent, according to The Ormax Box Office Report 2024. Telugu cinema commanded 20 percent of the national market and delivered its best-ever domestic collection at ₹2,348 crore. Malayalam cinema doubled its market share in a single year, from 5 percent to 10 percent, crossing ₹1,000 crore for the first time. Gujarati cinema grew 66 percent. Tamil held steady at 15 percent.

These are not niche numbers. They are the numbers of an industry restructuring itself from the ground up.

The film that made the point most dramatically was ‘Pushpa 2: The Rule’, a Telugu-language film, shot in Vizag and the Nallamala forests, starring Allu Arjun, who spent decades in Telugu B-movies before becoming one of the biggest stars in the country. It grossed ₹1,707 crore worldwide in 2024. It outperformed every Hollywood wide release in India that month. And, it did not have a single line of English in its original cut.

Cannes is a lagging indicator. But it is beginning to catch up.

What India is actually showing at Cannes 2026

Strip away the red carpet arrivals and look at what India is screening this year. The picture is more varied than any previous edition.

In the Cannes Classics section, the Film Heritage Foundation has returned for the fifth consecutive year. This time, it brings a 4K restoration of John Abraham’s 1986 Malayalam film ‘Amma Ariyan’ (‘Report to Mother’ in translation). The film follows a group of activists travelling from Wayanad to Kochi to inform the mother of a deceased young Naxalite about her son’s death. It is a film about political disillusionment in 1970s Kerala. It is the only Indian feature selected for a world premiere in the Cannes Classics section this year.

A 40-year-old Malayalam film getting a 4K restoration and a world premiere at Cannes in 2026 is not nostalgia. It is an argument that Indian cinema’s archive runs deep, and that organisations like the Film Heritage Foundation are fighting to make that archive visible.

Also Read: Stop chasing the male audience: Alia Bhatt uses Cannes 2026 platform to push for gender-agnostic cinema in India

At the Marché du Film, the festival’s business arm, where rights are sold and co-productions are arranged, Indian representation spans five languages. Director Chidambaram, who made ‘Manjummel Boys’ in 2024 on a budget of approximately ₹8 crore, is taking his next film ‘Balan: The Boy’ to the market. It is a Malayalam drama about identity and the relationship between a mother and her child. KVN Productions announced the screening with the caption: “Taking Balan: The Boy to the world stage.”

Also at the Marché is ‘Lakadbaggha 2’, notable as the first official India-Indonesia co-production to reach Cannes. And ‘September 21’, a Hindi-Kannada film directed by 22-year-old Karen Kshiti Suvarna, premieres at the Marché as a debut feature about an Alzheimer’s patient and the pandemic’s effect on family bonds.

Then there is ‘Spirit of the Wildflower’, a documentary by Kolkata-born filmmaker Shrimoyee Chakraborty about two sisters running India’s first legal mahua distillery in Madhya Pradesh. It is a story about tribal resistance and sustainable entrepreneurship set in rural India. It is at Cannes.

Punjabi cinema’s moment

The most symbolically charged appearance at Cannes 2026 may belong to Ammy Virk.

Virk, who built his career in Punjabi music and films, is walking the Cannes red carpet for the first time, bringing ‘Chardikala’ to the festival for its world premiere before its theatrical release. His co-star Roopi Gill joins him.

For Punjabi cinema, this is not a minor footnote. It is a first. The industry has produced consistent commercial hits domestically and among diaspora audiences in Canada, the UK, and Australia. But its presence at European film festivals has been close to zero. ‘Chardikala’ at Cannes changes that baseline.

Alongside Virk, a Punjabi-language short film called ‘Shadows of the Moonless Nights’, directed by FTII student Mehar Malhotra,has been selected for the La Cinéf competitive section. La Cinéf is Cannes’ competition exclusively for student films from accredited film schools. It is where Payal Kapadia’s short ‘Afternoon Clouds’ played in 2017, seven years before she returned with ‘All We Imagine As Light’ and won the Grand Prix. FTII students have won the top prize at La Cinéf twice: in 2020 and in 2024. A Punjabi-language student film in this section is a signal worth taking seriously.

The Payal Kapadia effect

Any account of India’s growing presence at Cannes has to return to 2024 and what happened then.

‘All We Imagine As Light’ became the first Indian film to compete in the main section at Cannes in thirty years. The last time was Shaji N Karun’s ‘Swaham’ in 1994. Kapadia’s film won the Grand Prix, the festival’s second-highest prize. At the same edition, Anasuya Sengupta became the first Indian actress to win Best Actress at Cannes, for ‘The Shameless’ in the Un Certain Regard section. After receiving the Grand Prix, Kapadia said from the stage: “Please don’t wait another 30 years to have an Indian film.”

They did not wait even one year. In 2025, Neeraj Ghaywan’s ‘Homebound’ screened in Un Certain Regard. And in 2026, Kapadia herself has been appointed president of the jury for the 65th Cannes Critics’ Week, one of the most prestigious platforms for new voices in cinema.

In three years, Kapadia went from competition entrant to jury president. That is a trajectory Indian cinema has not produced at Cannes in a generation.

What is actually different this time

The Cannes red carpet has always had Indian stars. What is new is what lies behind the carpet.

Marathi cinema personalities Ashok Saraf, Nivedita Saraf and Prajakta Mali are attending in traditional Marathi attire as a deliberate act of cultural representation. Gujarati actor-producer Manasi Parekh and singer-producer Parthiv Gohil will represent Gujarati cinema. Filmmaker Ashutosh Gowariker attends as director of the International Film Festival of India (IFFI), in an official capacity.

The India Cine Hub received 73 co-production applications in 2024-25; more than double the year before. Netflix opened creative technology hub in Hyderabad in 2025 investing over ₹1,000 crore in Indian film and series projects specifically to access the South Indian production ecosystem.

Regional cinema’s production budgets have scaled accordingly. ‘Devara: Part 1’ was made on ₹350 crore. ‘Kalki 2898 AD’ pushed to ₹600 crore. These are figures that put them alongside mid-tier Hollywood productions, not below them.

The gap that still exists

None of this means India has arrived at the top tier. The Palme d’Or race at Cannes 2026 does not feature an Indian film. The main competition, where the jury headed by South Korean director Park Chan-wook will deliberate, has 22 films. None is Indian.

The 30-year gap that Kapadia broke in 2024 should not be replaced by a narrative of permanent arrival. The structural barriers of funding, international co-production infrastructure, festival submission strategy still favour European cinema. One Grand Prix and one Critics’ Week jury presidency do not dissolve those barriers overnight.

What has changed is the starting position. India is no longer sending just stars to Cannes. It is sending films, deals, archives, student directors, Punjabi debuts, and a newly appointed jury president. The conversation has shifted from visibility to legitimacy.

That shift is the story. The red carpet photographs are just the evidence.