Watching a group of Indian filmmakers gracing the Cannes red carpet as proud representatives of their film is a feeling that’s quite unmatched: it is something that this writer has been thrilled to witness for the past couple of years, here at the Croisette. After Payal Kapadia’s ‘A Night Of Knowing Nothing’, which won the Grand Prix in 2024, and Neeraj Ghaywan’s ‘Homebound’ in 2025, for which the cast and crew of the film had turned out in full strength, it was the turn of John Abraham’s ‘Amma Ariyan’, which was screened in the Cannes Classics section.The afternoon belonged to Joy Mathew, lead actor, Bina Paul, editor, and Shivendra Dungarpur and others from the Film Heritage Foundation team, which was behind the restoration of ‘Amma Ariyan’. Venu, who shot the film so brilliantly, couldn’t be there, and his absence was felt.John Abraham, who had directed two films before ‘Amma Ariyan’, died in 1987, after a fall. His work soon gained adherents not only in his native Kerala, but everywhere else where firebrand filmmakers wanted to change the world with their zeal. In these highly commercial times, artistes like Abraham are considered quaint aberrations, but even during his own time, the director who attracted such descriptives as ‘maverick’ and ‘brilliant’, was an outlier. And that’s because he believed very strongly in the old dictum, fallen into disuse now, of the people, by the people, for the people, both in his own philosophy, as well as work practice.Here’s a look at the red carpet video of the world premiere at the @Festival_Cannes of FHF’s 4K restoration of John Abraham’s ‘Amma Ariyan’ (Report to Mother, 1986), lead by FHF Director Shivendra Singh Dungarpur along with lead actor Joy Mathew and editor Bina Paul. pic.twitter.com/unuxP0KDBS— Film Heritage Foundation (@FHF_Official) May 16, 2026“It was very much a people’s film,’ says Bina Paul, editor of ‘Amma Ariyan’, who remembers Abraham ragging her when she joined FTII as ‘this very young girl from Delhi, and how she and Venu (later her husband) began work on the film which was being made as a mission statement. ‘As we ran out of money very soon, John decided to form the Odessa Collective, and literally collected money wherever we went. It never had a formal release, but it became a highly watched film as everyone came in big numbers to watch it.” She has just finished walking the red carpet, in a graceful sari and matching batua, when I catch up with her in the press lounge. ‘Now that that’s behind me, it’s all fine,’ she says with a laugh.And it is more than fine. The restored print, meticulously brought back to sparkling life by the Film Heritage Foundation with close collaboration of L’Immagine Ritrovata and Digital Film Restore Pvt Ltd, sparkles. The film had no original negative. And the two 35 mm prints with the National Film Archives of India (NFAI), there simply due to the foresight of the formidable archivist P K Nair, had scratches and poor audio quality.Dungarpur, who had fallen under the spell of John Abraham’s films as a student at FTII, speaks of how much Abraham’s work meant to him as an idealistic young man. He was delighted, he says, when the collective gave him permission to begin restoring the film, which could begin only after a frame-by-frame assessment, given the degradation of the prints.In the lead up to its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival tomorrow, here’s a glimpse of the stunning transformation of John Abraham’s cult Malayalam film “Amma Ariyan” (1986) post the 4K restoration by Film Heritage Foundation revealed in these before-and-after clips. pic.twitter.com/YCyU9TEise— Film Heritage Foundation (@FHF_Official) May 15, 2026The film is very much a product of its time. Set in the Kerala of the 70s, with its flashpoints of labour unrest, people’s movements and a strongly political electorate which amplified activists’ voices, the film begins with a young man, Purushan, breaking his journey to Delhi, when he comes across a dead body of another young man. Is it only a coincidence that the two young men could be mistaken for each other? And that the ‘hero’ is called Purushan, or purush (man), standing in for any idealistic young man?Also Read – All Of A Sudden movie review: Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s film explores the difference between living and dyingPurushan takes it upon himself to be the bearer of the bad news to the deceased’s mother —amma ariyan or ‘report to mother’ — and so begins his odyssey, which turns into a multi-layered journey, with the turbulence in the towns he and the others in his mission pass through — a sequence with brightly-lit lamps is a thing of lasting beauty — reflecting an inner unrest.Story continues below this adThat a 40-year-old film can feel so urgent, and so current in today’s times tells us that the problems of the underclass and the underprivileged still exist, and that the power of good cinema never diminishes.Click here to follow Screen Digital on YouTube and stay updated with the latest from the world of cinema.© The Indian Express Pvt LtdTags:Cannes