‘All We Imagine As Light’ review: A poetic exploration of love and dreams

Mumbai, which poet Nissim Ezekiel deemed “unsuitable for song as well as sense”, is a leading character in Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine As Light. In Kapadia’s accomplished debut feature, poetry turns out to be a survival tactic, salve and a mode of travel from the ordinary to the extraordinary.

Kapadia’s layered screenplay centres on hard-working migrants making sense of Mumbai’s functional anarchy. Malayali nurses Prabha (Kani Kusruti) and Anu (Divya Prabha) work at the same hospital and rent a house together.

Prabha – reserved, cautious and somewhat defeated – watches over the younger and less inhibited Anu as would a protective sibling. Prabha’s empathy for the Maharashtrian hospital attendant Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam) doesn’t always extend to Anu, especially after Prabha learns that Anu is seeing Shaiz (Hridhu Haroon).

The predominantly Malayalam-language production is among the titles competing for the Cannes Film Festival’s top prize, the Palme d’Or. All We Imagine As Light is the first Indian movie to selected for the section in 30 years, and the first by a female director.

Kapadia’s previous short films and the docufiction A Night of Knowing Nothing (2021) had elliptical elements. In her latest project, Kapadia opts for a linear, docudrama approach with seamless forays into fantasy elements. The film joins a healthy cinematic tradition...

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