Vague Visages’ All We Imagine as Light review contains minor spoilers. Payal Kapadia’s 2024 movie features Kani Kusruti, Divya Prabha and Chhaya Kadam. Check out the VV home page for more film reviews, along with cast/character summaries, streaming guides and complete soundtrack song listings.

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All We Imagine as Light would feel like a cinematic landmark even if it didn’t arrive in the world the way it did. Payal Kapadia’s sophomore effort — and her first narrative feature — recently became the first film directed by an Indian woman to premiere in competition at Cannes, which in turn made it the first Indian film selected for the festival’s top section in 30 years. But after seeing the Grand Prix winner, these plaudits start feeling like footnotes. The movie itself, like the filmmaker’s epistolary docu-fiction debut A Night Of Knowing Nothing (2021), positions her as cinema’s foremost chronicler of contemporary Indian life, just two films in to a career that I imagine will grow all the richer.

This is apparent from All We Imagine as Light’s dazzling opening credits sequence, where urban life in Mumbai is overlaid with voiceover testimonies from rural India, in which people who left their old lives behind start anew in the big city. It’s a brief snapshot of life in the country’s most populated region, which justifies the old critical cliché about the setting feeling like a character in its own right, even as the melancholic laments to starting new lives hundreds of miles from home will be keenly felt by millions who’ve never even set foot there. This proves a fitting introduction into the life of nurse Prabha (Kani Kusruti), who hasn’t just moved from a smaller town to Mumbai, but has become estranged there shortly after her arranged marriage unceremoniously fell apart. 

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Prabha’s husband moved to Germany for work and didn’t once attempt to contact her until sending a rice cooker as a gift out of the blue. Whether this is a belated attempt to rekindle a relationship of convenience or a final goodbye isn’t elaborated on, and doesn’t need to be. It’s an important symbol which guides Prabha on a journey that doesn’t shy away from the daily disappointments of female life in the India of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in which the personal and political can’t be separated. Some audiences might not be able to distinguish this from the disarmingly tender tone, but All We Imagine as Light is one of the angrier feminist stories to have emerged from the festival circuit in recent memory. But while there is plenty of political commentary in the margins, Kapadia refuses to get caught up in polemic — there’s nothing she needs to passionately argue which the drama itself doesn’t lay out cleanly — and boldly aims to seek hope for these women instead. This is easier said than done when several characters feel like they’re being dictated over by the male forces in their lives at any given moment; in one amusing scene, a hospital patient goes as far as believing the ghost of her husband has visited just to annoy her while she’s watching TV.

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This quest for hope is more apparent in the lives of Prabha’s younger roommate, Anu (Divya Prabha), and older colleague Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam) — an elderly widow at risk of eviction. The former character ignores her parents’ messages about possible suitors in favor of her Muslim boyfriend, Shiaz (Hridu Haroon), who she chooses to keep a secret. It’s a romance that has already made Anu the subject of several water cooler conversations, as co-workers stress that they’re not racist while looking down on anybody who would choose to marry someone of that religious heritage. Anu’s relationship is a poorly kept secret, but it’s in the couple’s moments together where Kapadia paints her most defiant picture of happiness in the face of adversity, with their attempts to find a private space away from their families and housemates — be it behind a soccer field or a parking garage — becoming a radical act within a densely populated city where everybody’s watching and silently judging.

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If Prabha’s character arc in All We Imagine as Light is one of romantic repression, evoking memories of everything from Wong Kar-wai to Merchant Ivory as she ignores a new suitor she has clear feelings for, then Anu’s is one of pure liberation that’s all the more powerful with each setback she overcomes. Every last kiss between the couple feels even more sensual because of the obstacles they face just to find somewhere to be intimate, and Kapadia extends the invite to get caught up in the rush; it’s a reprieve from the bureaucracies of their daily lives, and feels all the more triumphant in spite of them. Comparisons will be made between All We Imagine as Light and the dramatic travelogues of Wim Wenders, especially as Kapadia’s third act takes a road trip detour that culminates in something approaching a spiritual epiphany, but one that doesn’t hold weight beyond the surface. As beautiful as Ranabir Das’ cinematography may be, All We Imagine as Light is a film far less enamored with its setting than the typical effort in Wenders’ oeuvre, with its patient, gentle demeanor and gorgeous, neon-hued cityscapes hiding a far more scathing social critique than the German director typically cares to make. 

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All We Imagine as Light is a tale distinct to the current climate in India, and yet, like all the best stories, there’s a universality to these tales in spite of the cultural specificity. It’s an emotionally seismic movie that appears humble and unassuming. In just her second film, Kapadia has become one of the most exciting directors working today. I doubt Cannes will be as quick to write off the cinema of India in her wake.

Alistair Ryder (@YesitsAlistair) is a film and TV critic based in Manchester, England. By day, he interviews the great and the good of the film world for Zavvi, and by night, he criticizes their work as a regular reviewer at outlets including The Film Stage and Looper.

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