Payal Kapadia’s ‘All We Imagine as Light’ Receives 8-Minute Standing Ovation After The Screening at Cannes Film Festival 2024. Watch videos.
India at Cannes 2024: India has truly made a splash at the ongoing Cannes Film Festival. Thursday was no exception. Filmmaker Payal Kapadia’s ‘All We Imagine As Light’ was screened at the film gala last evening. Notably, it is the first Indian film in competition at the Cannes Film Festival in 30 years. The fiction feature ‘All We Imagine as Light’ follows two nurses (Kani Kusruti and Divya Prabha) from Kerala, southern India, who are roommates in Mumbai. A trip to a beach town allows them to find a space for their desires to manifest. It stars Kani Kusruti, Divya Prabha, Chhaya Kadam, and Hridhu Haroon in prominent roles. And all these actors ruled the iconic red carpet like a pro.
The eight-minute standing ovation at the end of the film’s screening was definitely among the longest of this edition of the film festival.
In the images posted on official Instagram account of the Cannes Film Festival, the team of ‘All We Imagine as Light’ beamed in joy in front of the French shutterbugs. They also shook a leg on the red carpet.
Take a look at the videos:
Kani Kusruti, one of the two stunning leads of Payal Kapadia’s ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT 🌙 🇵🇸 pic.twitter.com/D2nurnZxIS
— Devika Girish (@devikagirgayi) May 23, 2024
Payal Kapadia’s #AllWeImagineAsLight receives a hearty eight minute standing ovation at the Cannes 2024.
The first female Indian filmmaker to screen a movie in the Cannes competition. Also the first Indian production in competition in three decades. pic.twitter.com/2EhE5MCVo7
— CinemaRare (@CinemaRareIN) May 24, 2024
All About ‘All We Imagine as Light’
Title: All We Imagine as Light
Director and Writer: Payal Kapadia
Leading Roles: Kani Kusruti, Divya Prabha, Chhaya Kadam, Hridhu Haroon
Premiere: 77th Cannes Film Festival, 23 May 2024
Competing for: Palme d’Or
All We Imagine as Light tells the story of Prabha and Anu, two nurses living in Mumbai who are grappling with personal issues in their relationships. Seeking solace and clarity, they decide to embark on a road trip to a beach town. In this town, a mystical forest becomes the backdrop where their dreams and inner desires start to manifest, offering them a space for reflection and potential transformation.
Recently, Payal, in interaction with Variety, opened up about directing ‘All We Imagine as Light’. “I was interested in women who come to a different place to work, and be financially independent. And it was something that I had seen growing up in a family of a lot of women, and also the ideas that we have, that financial freedom can in some way, give us some kind of autonomy, in India it’s more complicated than that. Which is something that I wanted to explore in the film, that when does one truly have that autonomy for our personal desires and choices,” she shared.
“Mumbai is a city which has a lot of contradictions. Because it is slightly easier for women in our country to come to work. But it’s also an expensive city. And it’s a difficult city to live in, to commute every day. I wanted to have all these contradictions. And in a space like Mumbai, which is extremely capitalistic – one of the stories in the film is about a woman who’s losing her house. And it’s the gentrification of the Lower Parel and Dadar areas that I’ve seen my whole life. It’s a very important part of Mumbai, a history that we need to remember,” she added.
Payal Kapadia is a graduate of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII).