All We Imagine as Light

This award-winning film festival favourite is a transcendent picture of love and sisterhood.

  • Director

    Payal Kapadia

  • With

    Kani Kusruti, Divya Prabha, Chhaya Kadam

  • India-France-Luxembourg-Netherlands 2024. 117min

  • Digital

  • Certificate

    15

  • Malayalam and Hindi with English subtitles

  • A BFI release

With her sublime second feature, a poetic portrait of three women navigating life in Mumbai, Payal Kapadia became the first Indian filmmaker to win the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival. Prabha is a dedicated and hardworking nurse whose absent husband moved abroad shortly after their arranged marriage. Anu, her younger roommate and colleague at the nearby hospital, is involved in a clandestine relationship with a Muslim man. The widowed Parvati, to whom Prabha lends a sympathetic ear, is being pressured by property developers to move out of her home. The women’s stories, challenges and joys intertwine as Kapadia artfully details the unspoken layers of yearning that weave through life in a bustling nocturnal city. Soulful yet melancholic, graceful and generous, with lush cinematography and a swooningly romantic jazz piano score, All We Imagine as Light is gorgeous, magical cinema.

Kimberley Sheehan, Film and Events Programmer

The screening on Saturday 11 January 15:30 NFT4 will be presented with Descriptive Subtitles.

See screenings of Payal Kapadia’s documentary A Night of Knowing Nothing.