Cannes Film Festival: Payal Kapadia is first Indian to win Grand Prix for ‘All We Imagine As Light’
The film, led by Kani Kusruti and Divya Prabha, explores the connections between two Mayalali nurses.
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Payal Kapadia made history at the Cannes Film Festival, becoming the first Indian director to win the Grand Prix, the second-most prestigious award after the Palme d’Or. Kapadia won the honour for her debut feature All We Imagine As Light, starring Kani Kusruti and Divya Prabha as Malayali nurses working in Mumbai.
In its review, Scroll described All We Imagine As Light as a “poetic exploration”, adding that “Kapadia’s beautifully filmed screenplay is a triumph of place and mood”. The movie also stars Chhaya Kadam and Hridhu Haroon in key roles.
The mainly Malayalam-language, Indian co-production was the first Indian title to be selected for the prestigious Competition section at Cannes in 30 years after Shaji Karun’s Swaham. Kapadia is also the first Indian woman nominated in this category. The Grand Prix win is especially significant considering that All We Imagine as Light is 38-year-old Kapadia’s first full-blown fiction film.
The jury for the 77tth edition was led by Barbie director Greta Gerwig and included Hirokazu Kore-eda, Eva Green, Lily Gladstone, Nadine Labaki and Omar Sy.
Kapadia was up against 21 other films, many of them by the heavy-hitters of world cinema. These included Mohammad Rasoulof’s The Seed of the Sacred Fig, Yorgos Lanthimos’s Kinds of Kindness, Sean Baker’s Anora, Francis Ford Coppola’s Megapolis, Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Perez, Jia Zhang-Ke’s Caught By The Tides, Christophe Honore’s Marcello Mia, Miguel Gomes’s Grand Tour, David...
