Sight and Sound’s Best Film of 2024
All We Imagine as Light, winner of Grand Prix at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, is a strikingly beautiful and lyrical portrait of working class India from a female perspective, signalling writer-director Payal Kapadia’s emergence as an exciting and visionary new filmmaker. A nocturnal ode to the bustling, vibrant city of Mumbai (in the vein of Satyajit Ray and Alice Rohrwacher) composed with poetic sensitivity and unforced simplicity, All We Imagine as Light is a testament to the power of female camaraderie and urban connection.
In Mumbai, thoughtful Nurse Prabha’s (Kani Kusruti) routine is upset when she receives an unexpected gift from her estranged husband. Her younger, flightier and rebellious roommate, Anu (Divya Prabha), tries in vain to find a spot in the city to be intimate with her secret boyfriend. Their colleague Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam) fights to stay in her home without any requisite paperwork left by her late husband. A trip to a beach town allows them each to find a space for their desires to manifest.
Payal Kapadia | France, India, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Italy | 2024 | 118 mins | Subtitled | 15
