All We Imagine as Light (M)

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, making history as the first Indian film in competition at Cannes in 30 years, the first by an Indian female filmmaker and the first Indian Grand Prix winner.

Centering on two roommates who also work together in a city hospital - head nurse Prabha and recent hire Anu - 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.

Cast: Hridhu Haroon, Chhaya Kadam, Divya Prabha, Kani Kusruti

Director: Payal Kapadia

★★★★★ "elegant and sensorial" EYE FOR FILM

★★★★★ "Hardly a shot lacks ambient magic, like the bunting agitated by a sea breeze." DAILY TELEGRAPH UK

★★★★★ "It is both dreamlike and like waking up from a dream. This is a glorious film." GUARDIAN

★★★★ "The film sails across the screen like a wide-eyed dream; always aware of what is shown, but very attentive to the other side." EL MUNDO