Debuting at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Payal Kapadia’s feature directorial debut All We Imagine as Light made history by being the first Indian film to win the Grand Prix Award, the festival’s second-most prestigious honor. The film tells the story of two nurses navigating the challenges of their love lives in the patriarchal society of India
Following its debut at Cannes, All We Imagine as Light has been screened at other prestigious film festivals including the 49th Toronto International Film Festival, the 51st Telluride Film Festival, and the 72nd San Sebastian Film Festival. It’s currently screening at the 52nd New York Film Festival and is next scheduled to screen at the 11th Miami Film Festival GEMS.
The film stars Kani Kusruti, Divya Prabha, Chhaya Kadam, Hridhu Haroon, and Azees Nedumangad.
Release Date
Directed by Payal Kapadia, All We Imagine as Light opens in select US theaters on November 15, 2024.
Synopsis
The light, the lives, and the textures of contemporary, working-class Mumbai are explored and celebrated by writer/director Payal Kapadia, who won the Grand Prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival for her revelatory fiction feature debut. Centering on two roommates who also work together in a city hospital – head nurse Prabha (Kani Kusruti) and recent hire Anu (Divya Prabha) – plus their coworker, cook Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam), Kapadia’s film alights on moments of connection and heartache, hope and disappointment. Prabha, her husband from an arranged marriage living in faraway Germany, is courted by a doctor at her hospital; Anu carries on a romance with a Muslim man, which she must keep a secret from her strict Hindu family; Parvaty finds herself dealing with a sudden eviction from her apartment.
Kapadia captures the bustle of the metropolis and the open-air tranquility of a seaside village with equal radiance, articulated by her superb actresses and by the camera with a lyrical naturalism that occasionally drifts into dreamlike incandescence. All We Imagine as Light is a soulful study of the transformative power of friendship and sisterhood, in all its complexities and richness.
Reviews
Peter Bradshaw in a Guardian review gave the film a perfect score of 5/5, writing, “There is a freshness and emotional clarity in Payal Kapadia’s Cannes competition selection, an enriching humanity and gentleness which coexist with fervent, languorous eroticism and finally something epiphanic in the later scenes and mysterious final moments – It is both dreamlike and like waking up from a dream. This is a glorious film.”
Justin Chang in a New Yorker review praised the film, writing, “As the first Indian feature invited to compete at Cannes in nearly three decades, Payal Kapadia’s narrative début would be notable enough; that the movie is so delicately felt and sensuously textured is cause for outright celebration.”
Official Trailer
Watch the official trailer for All We Imagine as Light.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.