'All We Imagine as Light' is a rare cinematic peek into the world that women live in
Premiering to the Mumbai audiences for the first time at Mumbai Film Festival 2024, Kapadia's film has much to prove—a tale of the city that caused waves at Cannes.
In a fictional film, audiences expect to enter a different world, complete with unique rules and textures that shape the story it seeks to tell. One may look similar, function on more or less the same rules that apply to the audience’s world, but it still exists on the other side of the screen. From the first frame, as the illusion of movement unfolds, viewers prepare to be transported elsewhere. Payal Kapadia’s Cannes Grand Prix-winning All We Imagine as Light (2024, hereafter referred to as AWIAL) does something refreshingly different. Initially, it retains elements of nonfiction storytelling, echoing the style of Kapadia and cinematographer Ranabir Das’ previous work, A Night of Knowing Nothing (2021), which won the Cannes Golden Eye for its artful, semi-fictional portrayal of student protesters’ resilience at FTII, the filmmakers' alma mater. Like A Night of Knowing Nothing, AWIAL begins with audio snippets from interviews and montage of Mumbai at work, collected over two years of research. These glimpses form a visceral foundation, crafting a third space where truth and fiction meet, forming the film’s essence.
As the camera sweeps through Mumbai awakening to the grind, we hear voices of those who carry the city’s weight—the migrant workers. Their accounts, tinged with a universal sense of impermanence and displacement, convey the haunting reality of feeling alienated within one’s own country. The blue hues of Mumbai in monsoon seem to deepen with the pathos of humankind's eternal quest for a “home”. “It takes away your sense of time,” says one voice. Another reflects, “Better get used to impermanence.” Kapadia weaves these themes of lost homes, migration, and impermanence into a story of female friendship and solidarity that is both grounded and liberating. Premiering to the Mumbai audiences for the first time at MAMI 2024, Kapadia’s film has much to prove—a tale of the city’s caused waves at Cannes. Keen eyes already acquainted with the ebb and flow of the city await the film at home, eager to see if they catch glimpses of Mumbai they know so well.
We meet Anu (Divya Prabha), a novice nurse at a speciality hospital, dozing on a local train’s berth as she heads home. Her senior, Prabha (Kani Kusruti), stands by the door in a striking shot that captures the gust of wind when two trains pass. In these two characters, the documentary style of the film’s opening melds seamlessly with its fictional premise. Even before we know them, we know what the city is like for them. Their days begin in the early hours and are spent working, leaving only the evenings as a reprieve before night descends. This twilight, beautifully captured by Das’s intuitive cinematography, becomes the canvas on which Kapadia paints her narrative. It is evident Kapadia grew up in the house of a painter — her mother, Nalini Malini. Influences of the form that mark Kapdia’s student works — Afternoon Clouds (2015) and And What is the Summer Saying (2018) make an appearance in this film as well. It is a testament to her confessed process-driven filmmaking. Her earlier work is a trail of the visual style and major themes (memory, women’s narratives and lingering husbands) culminating into the AWIAL giving the film its best quality, a whole lot of heart! This story has lived, breathed and changed as Kapadia transforms from a fierce student leader to an emerging international voice.
As Anu and Prabha navigate a city that is both unforgiving and freeing, the story unfolds. Anu, portrayed by Divya Prabha with effortless authenticity, begins a relationship with Shiaz (Hridhu Haroon), a Muslim man. In a city with little space for love, theirs is a transgression. Anu and Prabha live together. Their home, a place where young love blossoms, also witnesses the slow death of Prabha’s marriage that never truly was. Married young to a stranger who soon moved to Germany, Prabha knows only the lonely life within limits. In the middle of a heart-to-heart, in a state of easy vulnerability peculiar to women friendships, as they lay on bed staring into empty space, Anu asks, “How could you marry a total stranger?”. Prabha doesn’t have an answer. And though no one is looking, she still averts her gaze. It is this quiet desperation Prabha embodies, expressed as eloquently through eyes as with dialogues, that makes Kani Kusruti shine brighter amidst an already stellar cast.
Apart from allowing one to experience AWIAL in Mumbai as a point of entry to the film’s third space of fiction - nonfiction entanglement, what was particularly special about 2024 MAMI programme was not one but two impeccable Kusruti performances with the inclusion of Shuchi Talati’s coming-of-age Girls Will Be Girls (2024). Prabha’s eyes often avert, except when she’s at work. As Sister Prabha, she is most sure of herself. Her words are stern yet calm with stubborn patients like the elderly woman insisting her headless, dead husband still haunts her. Her hands hold the stethoscope steadily, yet both her words and body often hesitate when she must speak or act for herself. Until a bright red rice cooker arrives at their flat, as out of place in the dim home as Prabha is in her pink gown, something stirs. It bears no note, no address—just a “Made in Germany” label, symbolic of her vague marriage. Her absent husband always lingers. When intimacy presents itself to her in the form of a doctor who writes her poems in Malayalam, she unwillingly refuses, saying, “I am married, doctor.” In the middle of the night, she hugs the cooker in a scene thick with longing.
Parvaty, played by Chhaya Kadam—who perfects her role as a woman out of f*cks in her 2024 filmography (Manju Mai in Kiran Rao’s Lapata Ladies and Kanchan Kombdi in Kunal Khemu’s Madgaon Express)—speaks out what everyone's thinking: the husband deserves a slap or two. She works in the hospital canteen, completing this intergenerational, multilingual triad of colleagues-turned-support systems. A widow of a former cotton mill worker, she lives alone in a two-room house in a chawl. When real estate disrupts her life once again, as it did during the cotton mill strikes of the 80s, her decades of labour in the city mean nothing in the absence of papers. When asked for proof of residence, she urges the lawyer to ask anyone in the building. Her earnest plea breaks your heart, and the voices speaking of unforgiving impermanence ring like an alarm bell: it’s time to go home. And once again, Kapadia poses the question, “What home?”. The answer lies in the title, borrowed from an art installation painted by her mother in 2017. When Prabha and Anu accompany Parvaty to her village in Ratnagiri, the trip turns into a quest for that very light, filling the frames with stretches of trees, coastal roads, and the ocean. Things lull into quiet introspection, and through Anu and Shiaz’s declaration of love, Parvaty’s homecoming, and Prabha’s breathing life into a dying man, the film asks, “What do you imagine as light?”
*Spoilers*
In the Q&A after the screening at NYFF62, Kapadia shared that the flexibility the documentary medium offers—to develop, shoot, edit, revisit, and reshape the project simultaneously—resulted in a richer version of the film that began during her FTII years and evolved further with Das and producer Thomas Hakim. Forged by the palpable chemistry between her cast as they workshopped each scene to perfection, AWIAL embodies a unique vision.
In an early scene, as we uncover the levels of intimacy (and lack thereof) in the characters' lives, when Prabha burns her finger while cooking, Anu’s instinct is to gently suck the hurt away, but Prabha pulls back in discomfort. It’s perhaps Prabha’s biggest grievance with Anu—that Anu dares. She dares to claim space in a city that has rejected many like her, to love where Prabha dares not step a toe out of line, to be. Prabha avoids coworkers’ invitations to the cinema, suppresses feelings for the doctor, and reminds herself constantly of her husband who wants to be forgotten. Floating in the film’s narrative is also the question of a “free woman.” When warned about Anu’s lover, Prabha shames her for mindless flirting. This moment reflects Kapadia’s own experiences she shared in the Q&A—growing up and at times looking down on younger friends for making freer choices. Anu’s insistence on choosing her own partner and her courage to let him tag along to Ratnagiri for the possibility of intimacy, reflect a youthful resolve. In light of this confession, Prabha’s decision to let them be, despite nearly catching them in a forbidden act, feels like an apology that Kapadia is making to women she may have failed to open the door for a form-bending climax where the dead come alive (remember the lingering husbands?) to reconcile the present.
What is so special about All We Imagine as Light? It isn’t the perfect film. It is something better and much needed—a rare cinematic peek into the world that women live in.
This piece is written by Prakhar Patidar, an independent cinema and culture researcher navigating the exciting intersection of academia and practice. A Rama Mehta Writing Grant 2022, Jio MAMI Young Critics Lab 2023 and ARCUREA 2024 fellow, her recent engagements include an IFA funded project on WCC, programming for ALT EFF 2024, Fazeli Films' documentary projects, and contributing to Cut, and Print!