R Madhavan’s Rocketry the Nambi Effect did not screen at Cannes

R Madhavan‘s much-anticipated feature called Rocketry: The Nambi Effect, was screened at the ongoing 75th annual Cannes Film Festival. The film is based on the life of Padma Bhushan-awardee ISRO scientist and aerospace engineer, Nambi Narayanan. Madhavan is starring in, co-producing and also making his directorial debut with Rocketry.
Although the film did technically screen at the festival, it was not part of the so-called Official Selection or part of even the main festival. Rather, it was screened at Marché du Film, literally, ‘Film Market’, which is the business counterpart of the film festival. To screen your film at Marché du Film, you just need to pay a fee.
This is vastly different from the Official Selection, in which a Selection Committee chooses films that will be screened among thousands of entries every year. Under the Official Selection, there are three sub-categories: Competition, Out of Competition, and UnCertain Regard.
So if you do pay to screen your film at Marché du Film, you could say with some credibility something along the lines of “my so-and-so film screened at Cannes”. But it would not be the same as your film screening in the Official Selection category, in which a legitimate jury selects films which are screened at the festival.
It is convenient for producers or studios to use Marché du Film to pay for screenings and later market the film by saying it was “screened at Cannes”, which, again is true, but it did not undergo rigorous selection procedure by a professional jury to be selected. This setup works for everyone as the people behind Cannes film festival get money and it allows makers of the film to exalt their product.
The distinction was brought to light by a Twitter user called @rmshnt27, who tweeted, “Learnt recently that you can basically rent theatres in Cannes and say your film premiered at Cannes. It is not part of the official Cannes jury selection. Madhavan’s Rocketry is one such example.”
They said they got suspicious after watching a video of 10-minute standing ovation in the audience after a screening of Rocketry. Most people in the audience were Indians, and they wondered why that was the case.