Ever since Aishwarya Rai and Shah Rukh Khan’s glossy blockbuster Devdas had its premiere at Cannes in 2002, Bollywood has maintained a presence at the festival. This year is no exception: Rai made her customary red carpet appearance on the opening night, all the major Indian distributors have stands in the Palais des Festivals, and the India Pavilion hosted a showcase of independent cinema.

Another highlight was the India Party, organised by the Indian Government and held on Friday to celebrate 60 years of Indian independence. At the Hotel Majestic Beach, the Bolly meets bubbly night served up curry on the Croisette to celebrity guests including the actresses Preity Zinta and Manisha Koirala and the leading Tamil director Mani Ratnam.

On Saturday I mingled with the key players at Ashok Amritraj’s annual yacht party. Amritraj, CEO of the Hollywood independent studio Hyde Park Entertainment, has produced more than 90 features, including the recent Sandra Bullock release Premonition. Now he too is courting Bollywood royalty – he produced Rai’s Tamil-Hindi film Jeans. “The crossover will happen, wait and see," Amritraj says.

The megastar Amitabh Bachchan’s latest film, Cheeni Kum,which opens globally tomorrow, had its world premiere on Monday night. This romcom is a Bolly first: Bachchan plays a London chef who falls for a woman half his age. It is a sign of Bollywood’s willingness to tackle different subjects.

This is the first year in which two entire days have been allocated to Indian cinema. India Focus featured seven Indian films in various regional languages. Raj Kumar Hirani’s comic hit Lage Raho Munnabhai, which features the veteran Sanjay Dutt as a reformed conman who decides to change the world using Gandhian methods, had audiences laughing with the movie and not at it, as is usually the case with Bollywood.

Guru– Ratnam’s loose bio-pic of the great industrialist D. Ambani Guru – was a critical success, in which audiences were treated to the big-screen chemistry of the leads, the newlyweds Abhishek Bachchan and Rai.

But Indian cinema is not only Bollywood or films made in the Hindi language. Regional Indian language films got deserved exposure. The first-time director B. N. Radhakrishan’s Malayalam film Saira examined how religion and politics give rise to terrorism. In Missed Call the characters spoke Hinglish, a mixture of Hindi and English reflective of urban India. The Tamil entry Veyil captured the harshness of life in the southernmost Indian state, and the noted Bengali director Rituparno Ghosh’s Dosar was a moving study of the effect a husband’s infidelity has on a middle-class Calcutta couple.

Unfortunately, none of the Indian films was in competition – Shaji Karun’s Malayalam-language movie Swaham (1994) remains the most recent official Indian entry. Even so, India has an old association with Cannes: Chetan Anand’s Neecha Nagar won the Grand Prix in 1946. Still, though, the Palme d’Or remains elusive. To address this lack of representation the Indian Independent Film-makers Association was set up and this year achieved partial success by getting the festival’s opening weekend devoted to different Indian films. Several workshops were held to discuss ways of bringing quality movies to an international audience.

No Indian distributor confirmed that any of their films had been bought, but all were delighted by the interest shown. The Mira Nair presentation Little Zizou, a quirky comedy set in the dwindling Parsi community, could repeat the success of the same director’s Monsoon Wedding. “A major studio has shown an interest in acquiring this film and it is lined up for a possible Sundance premiere in 2008,” Tanuj Garv, the UK head of Studio 18, which is co-presenting the film, told me. Whether or not this happens, there is no doubt that it is an exciting time for Indian cinema. Perhaps one day the opening film at Cannes will be Indian.

Cannes whispers ...

Waitress Victoria Hart, 18, originally from Essex, was chosen to sing at a charity party hosted by George Clooney. The party – held to celebrate the premiere of Ocean’s 13, the latest in the heist franchise – had a dual purpose: it was also held to raise money for humanitarian aid in the Darfur region of Sudan.

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