All We Imagine As Light
Payal Kapadia’s eloquent fiction debut follows three women attempting to find a place in modern Mumbai.
All cities are crossroads, transitory beacons of artificial light which attract visitors and those who stay forever but who will always remain visitors. Mumbai is its own special case; something that Payal Kapadia pleads in her fiction debut – the first Indian film in Cannes Competition in three decades. It’s a light for audiences to surrender to, a realist-infused story of three women broadly representing three generations in a city where their hold is fragile, where their breaths barely leave a mist of a trace. This fiction debut from a talented documentarian brings to mind the work of Lucrecia Martel or Alice Rohrwacher, yet there’s a strong romantic streak that also calls to mind Wong Kar-wai’s great love affair with the city of Hong Kong.
Fionnuala Halligan, Screen International
Payal Kapadia (1986) is an Indian filmmaker and artist. Born in Mumbai to a family of painters and video artists, she studied at the Film & Television Institute of India. In 2017 her short film “Afternoon Clouds” was the only Indian film selected for the 70th Cannes film festival. Her first feature “A Night of Knowing Nothing” premiered at the Cannes Directors Fortnight in 2021 and was awarded the award for Best Documentary. It was also screened at the Toronto International Film Festival and the Busan International Film Festival.
A Night of Knowing Nothing (2021, doc), All We Imagine as Light (2024)