All We Imagine as Light

Three different women who are friends work at a hospital in Mumbai. Two nurses live together. The older one, Prabha, has been separated from her husband for a long time but still cannot bring herself to start a new relationship. The younger one, Anu, enters into a relationship with a Muslim man and becomes the subject of gossip. The third, the cook Parvaty, is in danger of losing her flat. When she decides to give up and return to the countryside, her two friends accompany her, and they find themselves in an unfamiliar sphere where space and time seem to dissolve... The film by young director Payal Kapadia is an ode to female solidarity and an ambivalent declaration of love for her hometown of Mumbai. In the 2024 Cannes competition, Payal Kapadia – the first Indian director ever to be represented in the competition! – won the Grand Prix of the Jury. "It is the fine line between the world of imagination and that of illusions that director Payal Kapadia explores in her impressive feature film debut. The three friends are searching for their place in life, for authentic relationships beyond the constraints of society, and also for a different, more supportive world. Together, they experience a kind of transitional space in which their own memories and dreams create images of a possible future through cinematic montage. In the process, they must navigate their way through false perceptions. Kapadia combines documentary material from the Indian metropolis with intimate close-ups of the protagonists. She decouples voice and body, blurring the boundaries between inside and outside, social reality and the psyche. The casual beauty that emerges is reminiscent in places of films such as Chris Marker's Sans Soleil. Through her idiosyncratic sound montage, which creates tension with the images, Kapadia creates not only an atmospheric portrait of the city, but also a cinematic space of perception that draws on the experiences of the three women. (Silvia Bahl, on: filmdienst.de)