The cast and crew of “Gangs of Wasseypur” at Cannes Film Festival in France.

The cast and crew of “Gangs of Wasseypur” at Cannes Film Festival in France.

CANNES: The longest-running entry in this year’s Cannes festival, a five-hour Indian gangster epic, won a warm welcome at the Riviera event, even drawing parallels with Quentin Tarantino.

Anurag Kashyap, who directed the five-hour-20-minute “Gangs of Wasseypur”, described the film to AFP as “a Bollywood-influenced gangster epic, part Western, part documentary.”

With a folk-meets-dubstep soundtrack and a basis in true stories, the film follows three generations of coal and scrap-trade mafia gangs in a suburb in east India who are obsessed with traditional Hindi cinema.

The two-part film screened this week in the Directors’ Fortnight sidebar section of the Cannes festival, to strong reviews.

“‘Gangs of Wasseypur’ puts Tarantino in a corner with its cool command of cinematically-inspired and referenced violence, ironic characters and breathless pace,” was how the Hollywood Reporter summed up the movie.

“There’s never a dull moment in this Indian gangland epic,” wrote Screen International.

Bollywood stars like to spice up the red carpet at Cannes but their movies seldom create a serious buzz.

Kashyap, who is also working with British “Slumdog Millionaire” director Danny Boyle on a film about 1960s Mumbai, hopes Cannes exposure can help change perceptions of Indian cinema and boost ties with foreign film-makers.

His film was one of three examples at Cannes this year of a burgeoning, alternative Indian cinema that departs from commercial song-and-dance Bollywood hits so popular at home – but the other two met with more lukewarm reviews.

Kashyap also had a hand in the experimental “Peddlers”, which screened in the other main sidebar section at Cannes, Critics’ Week.

Directed by newcomer Vasan Bala and financed through appeals on Facebook, the Mumbai-set movie weaves together the stories of a cynical narcotics cop, and two youngsters who fall into the drug trade.

The Hollywood Reporter regretted its “confused, at times naive story-telling”, despite an “action-packed last half-hour.”

Likewise, Ashim Ahluwalia’s “Miss Lovely”, screened in the Un Certain Regard new talent section of the festival, drew a muted reception.

France’s Liberation newspaper said the storyline, about the sleazy world of 1980s “C” grade Hindi movies, had the potential to be fascinating, but was rendered “charm-less” and “dull” through an overly-serious tone.