The opening film of MAMI Mumbai Film Festival 2024 was the debut feature of Payal Kapadia, an FTII (Film and Television Institute of India) graduate. It is essentially a story of three women who have migrated from small villages to Mumbai in search of a livelihood—two are roommates who also work together in a city hospital, Prabha (Kani Kusruti) is the head nurse while Anu (Divya Prabha) is a recent recruit. The third member of the trio is the cook at their hospital, Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam). The three women represent three different generations and mind sets. Much like Vittorio De Sica, 38-year-old Neorealist gives the stark social commentary a lyrical upgrade. Kapadia weaves poetry out of the prosaic, creates ballads out of the banal, and imbues everyday spaces with a dreamlike quality. 

It is a female buddy film. It is a road movie. It is an ode to a city. It is a contemporary fable. It is a coming-of-age story. It is a take on urban loneliness. It is a celebration of the independent working women. It is All We Imagine As Light—the first Indian film to play in competition at Cannes in 30 years which went on to win the Grand Prix, the second highest at the 77th edition of the international festival, and the film which might become one of the most widely distributed Indian indie films of all time. The movie has already released in France across 185 theatres. With the India distribution led by Rana Daggubati’s Spirit Media, the movie is scheduled to hit the theatres on November 22. It will be followed by releases in the UK and the United States of America in the same month.  

We caught up with Kapadia for a candid chat. Excerpts: 

Your A Night of Knowing Nothing won the Golden Eye award for best documentary film at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival. Your short film Afternoon Clouds was selected at 70th Cannes festival. Tell us about those two experiences vis-à-vis this one?  

My previous experiences were very different from this one. Last time my film was in a section called the Director's Spotlight, which is not the main competition, it's a sidebar. And then it was a COVID year, hence everything was much subdued; it wasn’t anything like the dhamaal it was this time! Before that, my student film was there, and then I was just wide-eyed taking it all. This time, I was much more nervous. I have seen films in the Grand Auditorium Louis Lumière—all the great films are screened there. And my film was to be shown at that haloed theatre. I was insanely nervous and felt the pressure. But my actresses and the crew were there. So, that just took a little edge off. 

Does international acclaim translate into ensuring a theatrical release back in India? 

I have to say yes. Because of what happened at the Cannes, people were interested and knew about the film. A lot of press covered it and that created a buzz around it. So, I had people approaching me from different distributions to distribute the film, which I think it would have been a little bit more difficult for me to find if I didn't have a kind of a foot in the festivals already. Besides India, the film will also release in over 50 countries. The festival is where people, including distributors from other countries saw it and picked it up. Cannes turned out to be a huge platform. In fact, for indie filmmakers like me, all these film festivals are a great place to even meet producers and build collaborations. 

In All We Imagine As Light, the city of Mumbai almost becomes the fourth character. Can you tell us about city as the muse?  

I love city films. My favourite Ray films are Pratidwandi, Mahanagar, and Seemabaddha. I always wanted to make a city film about my city. I think in contemporary times, I haven't seen many movies exploring it, of course there was The Lunchbox. But earlier there used to be more films in which you would get to see Mumbai. I felt the need to look at my city through cinema. Also, Mumbai is the city I know the best. I also want to make a movie in and about Kolkata—that is another city I love—but there the perspective and the lens would be very different, for my gaze would always be that of an outsider no matter how well I get to know that city. And I would need to spend a lot of time in the city to get to know the city…which I am happy to do because who doesn't want to go and stay in Kolkata!  

Also, it is mostly shot at night. It is not just Mumbai; the movie particularly explores the nightscape of the Maximum City—a city that never sleeps. Why did you pick the nights to unravel these stories? 

When you have a job, you most likely go to work in the morning, and you are there till evening. You are confined to your workspace, here it happens to be a hospital. So, you don't get to go out that much, unless it's a weekend. So, when do you get some time for yourself? It is usually the evenings. In fact, just like a character in the film says, ‘evenings are my favourite time of day’.  Evening is when you can go exploring, you can go eat some kebabs or pav bhaji or whatever. It is the rare few hours when you are free, not working. Also, I wanted to shoot a lot of the city, and I am a big sucker for the neon lights… 

Well, that brings me to my next question. Your movie really reminded me of Wong Kar-wai movies which extensively uses neon lights to capture the spirit of Hong Kong. Not only that but elements like two people inhabiting the same space living entirely different lives, the use of food as a symbol of warmth, and of course the beautiful frame of the window opening to trains crowded with nameless faces heightening the sense of urban isolation while reflecting the yearning to reach a utopian destination where one’s loneliness ends, and ‘All We Imagine As Light’ is found… Was it a conscious reference?  

Yeah, I agree. Wong Kar-wai is a huge influence on me. I really like his city films. He's a city filmmaker. When I was younger, I had the opportunity to go to Hong Kong once. And the first thing I did was visit the Chungking Mansions. Now any Wong Kar-wai fan would know that Chungking Express is one of his most famous films. And the actual mansion exists. But when you go there, it's not that interesting in real life…the movie makes it like this amazing place! That’s the magic of cinema. 

This is also a travel movie. In Indian cinema, which is replete with buddy road movies like Dil Chahta Hai, Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, and more recently Manjummel Boys, we hardly see women travelling. In fact, women travelling for leisure is not a concept that is prevalent in India. What made you take that route? 

That's such a nice question. I'm really glad you brought this up. Actually, it's women and free time—that is what I was thinking about. And the travel is part of that. But women and free time or women at leisure is something that is not explored much. It is as if we, as women, can’t have free time to chill, to nap, or to enjoy food...to relish a good crab dish with our hands. We are told that it is not ‘ladylike. It is not ‘ladylike’ to ‘waste time’ doing her own things or doing nothing for that matter. She should always invest her time in things that are fruitful. If she is home, she needs to be cooking, taking care of kids, we don’t see her taking an afternoon nap, especially in our cinema. I was thinking a lot about that. Also, what is leisure for people who live to earn and earn to live? These three women in my movie take a kind of a forced holiday from work as they go to drop one off to her village. And it became a way to talk about women at leisure and their free time.  

Nawazuddin Siddiqui, in an interview with MW, said that “If you are an actor or a filmmaker, the further you stay from Bollywood, the better”. What is your take on this? Do you think the commercial trappings of the industry smothers creativity? 

You know, that's true. But what is also true is that as independent filmmakers, you often need to look to the West for funds and land in a precarious position where you might end up catering too much to the Western gaze. Whether it's the Western gaze, or the Indian gaze, or the market gaze, you have to acknowledge it, and each can sway you a bit away from your original path. So, I think possibly one way to get it this right is to surround yourself with producers and crew who are aligned to your vision. You need a support system that keeps reminding you that, 'hey. this is what you like'. 

I want to try every kind of cinema in my lifetime, and that definitely includes Bollywood. But I'd like to have some amount of creative freedom and not be making choices that are not coming from a real and honest space. As long as I can try and continue to do that or at least have the option to work towards that, I am good. And I think we have reached that point where we can at least take a shot at it. I really think this is the time.