All We Imagine As Light (2024) – Film Review

Director: Payal Kapadia
Cast: Kani Kusruti, Divya Prabha, Chhaya Kadam
Certificate: 15

By Sarah Morgan

Dreamlike and compelling, writer-director Payal Kapadia’s fiction feature film debut is a modern classic.

On its cinema release last year, it received numerous plaudits, including the Grand Prix prize at the Cannes Film Festival; it was a major surprise that it didn’t secure India’s nomination for the Best Foreign Feature Academy Award.

Well, that’s Oscar’s loss.

The tale follows the lives of Prabha and Anu, nurses who share a flat in Mumbai, and their hospital’s cook, the older Parvaty.

“Demolish her home”

Prabha is quiet, withdrawn and has been abandoned by her husband, who arrived from Germany for their arranged marriage, but hasn’t been in touch with his wife for a year. In one of the film’s most tender scenes, she rejects the timid advances of a doctor who’s been worshipping her from afar, using her marriage as an excuse – you’re almost screaming at the screen, telling her to make a bid for happiness.

Hindu Anu, meanwhile, is more outgoing, but has to keep her relationship with Muslim Shiaz a secret.

Prabha tries to help Parvaty fight against her landlords, who want to demolish her home to make way for a skyscraper. When their efforts fail, Parvaty decides to quit her job and move back to her home village; Prabha and Anu assist her.

While there, Anu and Shiaz enjoy a rendezvous, Prabha offers them her support and, after saving a man’s life, realises something about her own future.

Shot in a near-documentary style, All We Imagine As Light offers insights into the lives of ordinary working people as they deal with problems facing women and the young in modern-day India, issues that can cause feelings of dislocation.

“Haunting quality”

Kani Kusruti was originally cast as Anu, but it took so long for the film to be made that Kapadia asked her to swap to the older Prabha; she delivers a hugely effective performance as a woman left adrift by a disastrous marriage, her expectations shattered by her husband’s desertion.

Divya Prabha instead takes the role of Anu, a lively and outgoing young woman determined to follow her heart rather than her head. Chhaya Kadam is also impressive as Parvaty; she’s raised her son, dealt with everything life has thrown at her, but is still left with nothing.

Expect to be musing over All We Imagine At Light for days after watching; it has a haunting quality that allows it to live long in the memory.

Special features include short films directed by Kapadia, as well as an in-depth interview with her that’s a must-see thanks to its insights into her remarkable career to date.

Sarah Morgan

Sarah Morgan studied film journalism at post-graduate level with the BFI and has been writing about TV and film for PA Media’s newspaper, magazine and new media customers since 1996. She’s also written for a wide range of other publications, both online and in print, including the book Offbeat and Intermission magazine, and is a regular contributor to the Talking Pictures TV podcast. When she isn’t watching movies, she’s collecting and reading vintage crime and horror paperback books or, for her sins, watching her beloved Sheffield Wednesday.

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