Amid the heady haze, unrelenting traffic, and humidity of the city of Mumbai, three complex women sit at the core of Payal Kapadia's All We Imagine As Light. Written and directed by the Mumbai-based A Night of Knowing Nothing filmmaker in her first fiction feature, the film is as much an ode to modern womanhood as it is to the bustling city itself.

Early in All We Imagine as Light, Anu (Divya Prabha) asks her boyfriend Shiaz (Hridhu Haroon) to send her kisses through the clouds so that when it rains, they reach her lips. The frequent precipitation in Mumbai,

Kapadia’s first fully narrative film, “All We Imagine as Light,” begins more like a documentary, surveying Mumbai, particularly at night, before gently gravitating toward three women, all of them hospital workers, who are juggling their workaday realities, and those of India’s stratified society, with their own aspirations.

In Payal Kapadia’s extraordinary drama, three women in Mumbai search for connections amid the city’s vibrant and darkly alienating churn.

Cannes Grand Prix-winning film, All We Imagine As Light, showcases a poignant narrative of loneliness and unspoken desires. Directed by Payal Kapadia, the film releases on November 22.

Coming in hot from winning the Grand Prix at the 77th Cannes Film Festival, All We ... light(s) is great for a lively city like Mumbai, but also as a symbol of the light within all human beings’ souls. The story follows Prabha (Kani Kusruti) and Anu ...