Dir: Payal Kapadia, 2024, France-India-Netherlands-Luxembourg, 115 mins, Malayalam and Hindi with English subtitles, Cert: 15
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Sun 15 December // 17:00
Mon 16 December // 20:00
Tickets: £5 (full)
"There is a freshness and emotional clarity in Payal Kapadia’s Cannes competition selection, an enriching humanity and gentleness which coexist with fervent, languorous eroticism and finally something epiphanic in the later scenes and mysterious final moment...This is a glorious film."
--Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
In this subtly stunning fiction debut by Payal Kapadia, three nurses at a Mumbai hospital grapple with work, sex, friendship, and life in the modern city.
Winner of the 2024 Cannes Grand Prix, All We Imagine as Light focuses on the lives of three women who have migrated to Mumbai from the Indian countryside: Prabha, Anu and Parvaty. But while the film explores themes of urban alienation, discrimination and exploitation, All We Imagine as Light isn't at all heavy-going: Kapadia tells her story with a beautiful lightness of touch, not to mention stunning cinematography. Absorbing, moving and universally relatable, All We Imagine as Light is full of life and - yes - light.
"This fiction debut from a talented documentarian brings to mind the work of Lucrecia Martel or Alice Rohrwacher, yet there’s a strong romantic streak that also calls to mind Wong Kar-wai’s great love affair with the city of Hong Kong."
--Fionnuala Halligan, Screen International