Grand Prix of the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, this luminous female portrait dazzled the Croisette – Cinema News


In theaters this week, All We Imagine as Light was awarded the prestigious Grand Jury Prize at the last edition of the Cannes Film Festival. Modest and subtle, this portrait of three friends proves to be shockingly restrained.

A modern tale anchored in reality

Prabha (Kani Kusruti), a nurse in Mumbai, has banned herself from any sentimental life since her husband left to work in Germany. For her part, Anu (Divya Prabha), her young roommate, is secretly dating a young man whom she has no right to love. Finally, Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam) must leave everything behind under pressure from developers who are transforming the city.

During a stay in a coastal village, these three women, hampered in their desires, finally see the hope of a new freedom.

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Crowned with the prestigious Grand Prix at the 77th edition of the Cannes Film Festival, All We Imagine as Light is the first feature-length fiction film by Indian filmmaker Payal Kapadia. However, this is not the director's first attempt: in Cannes, in 2021, she had already been awarded a Golden Eye for Best Documentary during the Cannes Filmmakers' Fortnight for her film Tout une night without knowing.

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Born in Mumbai, where she spent part of her childhood, Payal Kapadia once again demonstrates her abilities as a documentary filmmaker with All We Imagine as Light. Anchored in reality, her first feature-length fiction film addresses all the issues of a modern and feminist social investigation, displaying a modesty and delicacy close to objectivity.

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I wanted to make a film about women who leave their hometown and their home to work elsewhereshe explains. Mumbai was the ideal setting. Another thing that interested me was its constant evolution. We are currently witnessing a real real estate boom. Some neighborhoods are changing rapidly.

A huge proportion of men who come to Mumbai for work arrive without their families and see their wives and children only once a year. So there is a feeling of uncertainty. For many, this city undoubtedly represents a unique opportunity, but that does not mean that life is easy or fulfilled there.

Filmed as a character in its own right, the city of Mumbai breaks away from its role as a setting to vibrate to the rhythm of the life that teems there, made of work, love and doubts. This almost raw realism allows Western spectators to fully grasp the human issues of All We Imagine as Light by discovering the capital of the Indian state of Maharashtra through side roads full of authenticity and life.

We are witnessing a kind of gentrification (in Mumbai), It’s very strange to observe when you grew up there. I wanted to show that, the speed at which the city is changing. In the opening scene, for example, we can see a wholesale market. Around 7 a.m., when this market closes, the neighborhood changes its face to welcome the international population who have their offices there. The juxtaposition is fascinating: on one side markets and the remains of old factories – traces of what the neighborhood once was – and on the other these large buildings, with their neon signs, where business is done.

It is against this perfectly woven backdrop that the stories of these three women intertwine.

A multiple female portrait

Confronted by their drastically opposed lifestyles, the young Anu and Prabha, her more resigned elder, form an explosive pair that seems to illustrate all the contrasts in contemporary Indian society.

Prabha, played by Kani Kusrutiis an experienced nurse who has resigned herself to the departure of her husband, but refuses to give in to the advances of other men. His younger sister Anu, played by Divya Prabhais also a nurse and is dating a young Muslim man without being married to him. Both Prabha and Anu form a seemingly contradictory but ultimately complementary roommate.

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Placed at the heart of the plot, these two diametrically opposed personalities, reflections of two eras, allow Payal Kapadia to reflect on the place of women in Indian society. “There is a contradiction that I find very interesting,” she explains, “between this feeling of independence, emancipation and even feminism, on the one hand, and on the other the fact that these women remain linked , even attached to their family of origin. Even if they achieve this emancipation, their family continues to dictate a significant part of their social behavior.

A multiple female portrait anchored in reality, All We Imagine as Light was awarded the Cannes Jury Prize. A gem, to discover in theaters this week.

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