Featuring Kani Kusruti (Prabha) Divya Prabha (Anu) and Chhaya Kadam (Parvaty) in the lead roles, ‘All We Imagine as Light’ was the first Indian film to be selected in an Official Competition at Cannes in three decades. Writer-director Payal Kapadia also made history as the first female Indian filmmaker ever to have a film in this prestigious section of the festival.
After dancing down the red carpet, the director and her cast saw the film receive an eight-minute standing ovation; worldwide critical acclaim and 5-star reviews followed. Now, BFI Distribution has announced the release of the 2024 Cannes Film Festival Grand Prix winner, in UK and Irish cinemas on November 29. A BFI Blu-ray and BFI Player release will follow in early 2025.
Kapadia said: “Although ‘All We Imagine as Light’ is my first fiction feature, it’s still very important to me that fiction and documentary can exist together.
“What I try to do is approach fiction in a non-fiction way. I find the juxtaposition of the two very interesting and I strongly believe that it makes the non-fiction more fiction and the fiction more non-fiction.”
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In Mumbai, thoughtful Nurse Prabha’s routine is upset when she receives an unexpected gift from her estranged husband. Her younger, flightier and rebellious roommate, Anu, tries in vain to find a spot in the city to be intimate with her secret boyfriend. Their colleague Parvaty 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.
An Indian feature with the look and feel of a European arthouse classic, exploring the complexities of female friendship, this beautiful, sweeping, emotional film brilliantly captures the frantic pace, the vibrant colours and the heady atmosphere of modern Mumbai.
Kapadia is a Mumbai-based filmmaker who 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 at the Cannes Cinéfondation and the Berlinale respectively. Her first feature film, ‘A Night of Knowing Nothing’ premiered at the 2021 Cannes Directors’ Fortnight, where it won the Golden Eye Documentary Prize.
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‘All We Imagine as Light’ is a France-India-The Netherlands-Luxembourg co-production. The producers are Thomas Hakim and Julien Graff of Petit Chaos in Paris, and Zico Maitra of Chalk & Cheese Films in Mumbai. Additional partners are Arte France Cinéma, Baldr Film (Netherlands), Another Birth (India), Les Films Fauves (Luxembourg) and Pulpa Film (Italy). European development funds, including Rotterdam’s Hubert Bals grant and the Cannes Cinéfondation Residency, enabled Kapadia to reside in Europe and develop the film with her French producers, before beginning production in her India.
*Info: ‘All We Imagine as Light’; BFI Player