The lives of three women nurses are front and centre in Payal Kapadia’s luminous Mumbai-set drama. Prabha (Kani Kusruti) works long hours to avoid thinking about her husband, who left for Germany long ago and eventually stopped calling. Her younger roommate, Anu (Divya Prabha), spends her evenings with her Muslim boyfriend while dodging calls from her parents, who are looking to set her up with a Hindi husband. Meanwhile, Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam), an older widow, is being pushed out of her home by greedy property developers.
Winner of the Grand Prix at this year’s Cannes Film Festival (a historic first for an Indian film), All We Imagine as Light derives considerable power from its steady accumulation of quotidian detail. As a minor character puts it in a line of poetry, “My dreams are made of everyday things.” A moving portrait of resistance and camaraderie, it is a film that finds beauty and solace in the unlikeliest of places.
Grand Prix, Cannes 2024
Supported by
Media Partner
Kani Kusruti, Divya Prabha, Chhaya Kadam, Hridhu Haroon, Azees Nedumangad
France/India/Netherlands/
Luxembourg
2024
In Malayalam and Hindi with English subtitles
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
Credits & Director
Executive Producer
Harshit Agarwal, K. C. Pranav Raj, Neil Chowdhury
Producer
Thomas Hakim, Julien Graff
Screenwriter
Payal Kapadia
Cinematography
Ranabir Das
Editor
Clément Pinteaux
Production Design
Piyusha Chalke, Yashasvi Sabharwal, Shamim Khan
Original Music
Dhritiman Das
Payal Kapadia
Payal Kapadia is a Mumbai-based filmmaker. She studied film direction at the Film & Television Institute of India. Her short films Afternoon Clouds (2017) and And What Is The Summer Saying (2018) premiered respectively at Cannes and the Berlinale. Her first feature film, A Night of Knowing Nothing (2021), premiered at the Directors’ Fortnight where it won the Golden Eye for Best Documentary.
Filmography: A Night of Knowing Nothing (2021)
Photo by Ranabir Das
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
Agatha's Almanac
Shot over six years on vibrant 16mm film, Agatha’s Almanac is an artful documentary portrait of filmmaker Amalie Atkin’s octogenarian aunt, who has fashioned herself an endearingly simple and self-sustaining lifestyle on her Manitoba farm.
Calle Málaga
Seventy-nine-year-old María Ángeles lives independently in Tangier's Spanish quarter. When her daughter pressures her into selling her apartment, she refuses to give in, finding in her old age a new resilience and an unexpected romantic connection.
The Art of Adventure
The unbelievable adventure story of how painter Robert Bateman and ecologist Bristol Foster drove a Land Rover from Africa to Australia in 1957, developing a love of nature to last a lifetime. An inspirational love letter to the adventure of life itself.
The Blue Trail
77-year-old Tereza makes a break for the Brazilian jungle in this trippy septuagenarian fantasy, the latest from Brazilian director Gabriel Mascaro is a quirky picaresque, lushly photographed and filled with mordant humour.
Follies
After two kids and 16 years of marriage, François and Julie decide to open up their relationship in a bid to rekindle their dwindling sex life. A painfully hilarious and brutally honest depiction of love, sex, and intimacy in the age of the internet.
Castration Movie Anthology 1: Traps
Louise Weard's underground movie is a talk-a-thon in two chapters and four hours: a sex worker contemplates having her testicles removed, and a movie production assistant pitches himself right out of a job, and other misadventures in Vancouver life.