The movie will be screened in the festival's Le Marche du Film category this month, ironically coinciding with Manto's birthday that falls on May 11, the day one of Cannes.
The official screening of "Mantostaan" is on May 14.
"I am very excited for the premiere. As an independent filmmaker, this is a huge boost for me and others because not many studios come forward to back such projects easily. A platform like Cannes will encourage us a lot as our aim is not to earn crores of rupees but to make people aware about the film," Rahat told PTI.
"When Manto had written those stories, there was a huge controversy, but now people who write literature appreciate it. Pakistan said he was Indian and India said he was a Pakistani. He was in fact a world in his own and hence I titled the film 'Mantostaan'," Rahat said.
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"Mantostaan" deals with the issue of India-Pakistan
partition, but Rahat is not afraid of any backlash.
"There is nothing in the film which will hurt the sentiments. The approach to filmmaking should be clean and without any motives. We have retained the same zone, characters, names from the story. We did not feel the need to add or subtract anything from it," the director said.
"I didn't have to work on the language or to get the nuances right since there is not much of a difference between from where I come from and where the stories are set in. But to get the get up of the characters, to get the period setting right was a task," he said.
"We had to scout for locations, which would look of that era, we didn't shoot anything in the studio. We mostly shot in Punjab and Jammu," he said.
"They are very happy with it. They said through this film, the work of Manto will reach a wider audience, which is the biggest compliment to me. They have also applied for visa. I plan to hold a special screening for them in Kashmir after I am back from Cannes," he said.
The film stars Raghubir Yadav, Sonal Sehgal, Shoib Nikash Shah, Tariq Khan, Virendra Saxena among others.