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.

C oming in hot from winning the Grand Prix at the 77th Cannes Film Festival, All We Imagine as Light is a hopeful story. The themes revolved around sisterhood, keeping the dying h

This enveloping drama, which centers two women in Mumbai, is about solidarity between women, about making ends meeting, and about how a populous city can feel like the loneliest place in the world.

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.

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,

Written and directed by Payal Kapadia, All We Imagine As Light is the first Indian film to win the Grand Prix at Festival de Cannes. It is currently playing at select theaters across India.

Winner of the Cannes Grand Prix, writer-director Payal Kapadia's intimate spell of a movie shows a complex side of India that many urbanites will relate with.

“All We Imagine as Light,” in theaters Friday, has been widely celebrated since its Cannes premiere, and Kapadia heralded as a major new talent to watch, which is just as it should be. The film is a reminder of the transcendent power of cinema, even, and perhaps especially, when not all that much is happening.