Lining the blue white shore, alongside the Festival Palais at Cannes, are be-flagged national pavilions, several dozen of them — among them India’s. In recent years, it has become a packed and happening place, often a meeting point of people who have nothing really to do with India or its films. “See you at the India Pavilion,” you keep hearing and it is not just the free refreshments and samosas that bring them there. The Pavilion is part of something almost as important as the films: the Festiva Marche (the Festival Market). The Pavilions apart, two huge floors of the Palais offer world cinema to the world. Cannes is as important commercially as it is artistically.u00a0

Raghuvendra Singh, Joint Secretary, Films — Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Apoorva Srivastava, First Secretary (Press, Information and Culture) of the Embassy of India in Paris and Uday Kumar Varma, Secretary, Ministry of Information and Broadcastingu00a0