France/India/Netherlands • Drama • Year: 2024 • Running Time: 118 mins
Languages: Malayalam/Hindi/Marathi/English/German
Audience Response: 14 slips returned
- ‘Excellent’; 6 votes
- ‘Very Good’: 6 votes
- ‘Good’: 1 vote
- ‘Satisfactory’: 1 vote
- ‘Poor’: 0 votes
Read the comments here or visit the “All We Imagine As Light” discussion page to join in the conversation.
Synopsis:
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.
All We Imagine as Light is a soulful study of the transformative power of friendship and sisterhood, in all its complexities and richness.
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.
David Fear (Rolling Stone)
Director: Payal Kapadia
A Night Of Knowing Nothing (2021)
Writers: Payal Kapadia • Himanshu Prajapati • Naseem Azad • Robin Joy
Main Cast:
| Kani Kusruti | Prabha |
| Divya Prabha | Anu |
| Chhaya Kadam | Parvaty |
| Hridhu Haroon | Shiaz |
| Azees Nedumangad | Dr Manoj |
(for full cast list, additional technical information and reviews, please visit the All We Imagine As Light pages in IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes).
Film Notes:
Here is a movie which Derek Malcolm in The Guardian described as “a triumph… dreamlike and magical”. He also went on to suggest that director Payal Kapadia’s fluent and absorbing story telling could be compared with Satyajit Ray’s THE BIG CITY (1963) and DAYS AND NIGHTS IN THE FOREST (1977).
It’s set in present day Mumbai and tells the story of three hospital nurses who come to the big city from smaller home towns: Prabha (Kani Kusruti), Anu (Divya Prabha) and the older Parvati (Chhaya Kadam). Prabha and the flightier, younger, Anu are roommates and Anu, having just moved in, is already asking Prabha to cover her share of the rent. She is also causing some scandal and gossip in the hospital due to having a Muslim boyfriend, Shiaz (Hridhu Haroon). Meanwhile, Parvati, a widow, is threatened with eviction because a property developer has bought her apartment building and her late husband did not leave her the documentation that would prove her resident’s right to remain, or at least, get compensation.
Prabha is married but her husband departed for Germany soon after the wedding. Now a German-made, brand new, rice cooker arrives through the post from him. Is he sending it to renew the relationship or saying “goodbye”? Added complications are that a doctor at the hospital is showing a romantic interest in Prabha, even though he knows she is married. Anu is having reservations about her relationship with Shiaz, especially when an ‘assignation’ is thwarted.
Life in the big city is proving complicated and emotionally fraught for the roommates so they agree to accompany Parvati when she quits her job to return to her home village on the coast. In the village Prabha experiences a revelation, albeit partly hallucinatory, about her own life, its past and possible future.
“A glorious film” Peter Bradshaw called it. We hope you agree.