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All We Imagine as Light film image; two woman examine an orange container

All We Imagine as Light

വെളിച്ചമായ് സങ്കൽപ്പിച്ചതെല്ലാം

Special Presentations

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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

 

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Director
Cast

Kani Kusruti, Divya Prabha, Chhaya Kadam, Hridhu Haroon, Azees Nedumangad

Credits
Country of Origin

France/India/Netherlands/
Luxembourg

Year

2024

Language

In Malayalam and Hindi with English subtitles

Film Contact
Links
18+
115 min
Award Winners Drama Women Directors
Petit Chaos

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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 headshot; All We Imagine as Light director

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

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