The light, the lives, and the textures of contemporary, working-class Mumbai are explored and celebrated by writer/director Payal Kapadia, who won the Grand Prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival (the first Indian film to be selected for competition in 30 years!) for her revelatory fiction feature debut.

Centering on two roommates who also work together in a city hospital—head nurse Prabha and recent hire Anu —plus their coworker, cook Parvaty, Kapadia’s film alights on moments of connection and heartache, hope and disappointment. Prabha, her husband from an arranged marriage living in faraway Germany, is courted by a doctor at her hospital; Anu carries on a romance with a Muslim man, which she must keep a secret from her strict Hindu family; Parvaty finds herself dealing with a sudden eviction from her apartment. Kapadia captures the bustle of the metropolis and the open-air tranquility of a seaside village with equal radiance, articulated by her superb actresses and by the camera with a lyrical naturalism that occasionally drifts into dreamlike incandescence. ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT is a soulful study of the transformative power of friendship and sisterhood, in all its complexities and richness. With Kani Kusruti, Divya Prabha, Chhaya Kadam.

A bona fide audience and critical hit at major festivals around the world, and ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT has elevated its director, Payal Kapadia, from documentary-maker to celebrated auteur.

"There are a million stories in the naked city, and Kapadia is about to show you three of them in the most delicate, moving way possible. She’s also about to mount a quiet, sneak attack on your soul." (Rolling Stone Magazine)

"A portrait of female loneliness, longing, and suffering that derives its power from its subtle lyricism and heartfelt empathy." (The Daily Beast)

"A miraculously subtle piece of work... Its writer and director, Payal Kapadia, was born in Mumbai and that’s where she sets her first drama — not the bustling battlefields of 'Slumdog Millionaire' or 'Monkey Man,' but a rainy city marked by the anonymity of crowds and small spaces... It’s as if the director herself has run into an existential choice: to show women in the fullness of their complications, frustrated and abandoned? Or to give them an escape? Fittingly, for a filmmaker who already seems major, her answer is simple. We need both." (Los Angeles Times)

Sunday, December 15
Doors 1:15 pm | Movie 1:45 pm *Start time subject to change. Please arrive on time.

ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT (Payal Kapadia, 2024 / 118 mins / PG / Hindi with English subtitles) In Mumbai, Nurse Prabha’s routine is troubled when she receives an unexpected gift from her estranged husband. Her younger roommate, Anu, tries in vain to find a spot in the city to be intimate with her boyfriend. A trip to a beach town allows them to find a space for their desires to manifest.