All We Imagine As Light - Film Review

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Winner of the 2024 Cannes Grand Prix, All We Imagine As Light is directed by Payal Kapadia and stars Kani Kusruti as Prabha, Divya Prabha as Anu, Chhaya Kadam as Parvaty, Hridhu Haroon as Shiaz and Azees Nedumangad as Dr Manoj. Set in Mumbai, the story centres on three women, two of them are roommates (Prabha and Anu), and also work together in a city hospital, and the other, is also a co-worker and cook (Parvaty) at the hospital. Prabha is estranged from her husband from an arranged marriage, who now lives in Germany, their correspondence became less and less over time, till there was nothing to say at all. Hardworking and chaste, she's being courted by a doctor at the hospital even though he is aware she's a married woman. Anu is in a secret relationship with Shiaz, a Muslim man, which she keeps hidden from her strict Hindu family. Parvaty has troubles of her own as she suddenly finds herself dealing with a sudden eviction from her apartment, after 22 years of living there.

An exploration and celebration of the lives and textures of contemporary, working-class Mumbai, writer/director Payal Kapadia won the Grand Prize at this year's Cannes Film Festival for her revelatory arthouse fiction feature debut. With a run time of 118 minutes and rated 'M' - this subtitled Malayalam, Hindi language film will be in cinemas on 26 December 2024.


A dive into the ordinary lives of three women, their stifling lives heavy like the monsoon, well matched to the cinematography that sets the scene. It's exhausting and challenging not to mention crowded in the city of dreams, Mumbai, where the jobs, money and opportunities reside. Significant as our lives are to us, it brings home our insignificance where one can go unnoticed and invisible in a population of millions. A hardworking nurse and educator, Prabha is quietly conflicted and reserved and doesn't express her emotions easily. She's always ready to lend a helping hand, never putting herself first and is yet to discover what her real desires are and where she sits in the world. Husbands working overseas for years on end without seeing their family to earn a better living was commonplace, and Prabha accepts this silently as her fate. Anu on the other hand is starting to earn a reputation as she sneaks out at night to meet her forbidden love - looking for places to express their desires. In spite of culture and family expectations, Anu is quite an independent thinker and expresses herself boldly, determined to live life her way. Parvaty, a widow realises she doesn't have much of a choice when she's evicted as she has no papers left by her husband to prove she's entitled to live where she has been for the last 22 years and decides to go home to her village. Practical and a realist, she figures she'll work out what comes next, when she gets home, where she's already organised to get a job as a cook.

Parvaty's situation harks to a time when Mumbai was in a state of flux and there was a real estate boom. Builders were grabbing areas where people had resided for years. As not everyone always had the right documentation, it made it easier for those who had the means to stake claim to the land. The film features an area that spans from Lower Parel to Dadar where large cotton mills once existed until the 1980s. In shutting down, with jobs lost, much of the land given to the mill owners at heavily subsidised rates by the then government was distributed in fairness, amongst the families of the mill workers. However, they were swindled out of this and the area became a space for massive gated luxury building complexes as well as high-end shopping malls. Huge profits were made by the mill owners while those who worked there were left with nothing.


A change of scenery as Prabha and Anu help Pavarty move home to a coastal village. Their friendship and camaraderie grow closer and their lives become more intertwined, with a change in landscape, they have room to think, to arrive at decisions and accept each other without judgement. The three women are ordinary yet exceptional in their performance. There's a strong sense of loneliness, longing and helplessness in the film. It's also a drama about life's fragility, and nurturance between three very different women also bound by culture and traditions. These are three women with troubles, but the director is not asking for your pity, nor does she make light of their difficulties. She offers you lives that may seem so different from your own, but are also transcendently familiar.

There are some stellar scenes at the beach, where they let loose in drink, dance and mischievous actions when they are truly themselves that's heartwarming and adds a bit of lightness to the scenes. The need for female intimacy in a country that struggles to comprehend the nuances of female desire, Kapadia's Mumbai is a slow poison of monotony and apathy. It's filled with people but there's little sign of intimacy or fondness amongst them. The rice cooker gift in the beginning from Germany speaks of what could be both a new beginning and an end of a relationship, while an extraordinary scene in the end - a saving of a nearly drowned man could be symbolic of entering another realm on another plane which may not be real, and is best left to be discovered. However, it does seem to provide as much of a release as it were, and a realisation that sets one free to follow and chase all we imagine as light.


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