All We Imagine as Light is a beautiful, sweeping, emotional film that explores the complexities of female friendship and captures the frantic pace, the vibrant colours and the heady atmosphere of modern Mumbai.
In the city, 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.
Payal Kapadia’s hugely acclaimed fiction debut was the first Indian film to be selected in Official Competition at Cannes in three decades, where it was awarded the Grand Prix.
Malayalam and Hindi with English subtitles
★★★★★
‘A gorgeous achievement’
Tim Robey, Daily Telegraph
‘This is a glorious film’
Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian ★★★★★
‘A magical ode to nocturnal Mumbai’
‘...bound to be one of those international films that break out of the art-house festival circuit and into cinemas and hearts everywhere’
Nicholas Barber, BBC
‘A glowing portrait of urban connection and unexpected sisterhood’
Jessica Kiang, Variety
‘Kapadia captures the way two women in Mumbai move through the world with bracing intimacy’
IndieWire
‘…that the movie is so delicately felt and sensuously textured is cause for outright celebration.’
Justin Chang, The New Yorker