All We Imagine as Light

Writer-director Payal Kapadia won the Grand Prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival for her revelatory fiction feature debut, exploring and celebrating the light, lives, and textures of contemporary working-class Mumbai. Centering on two roommates who work together at a city hospital—head nurse Prabha (Kusruti) and recent hire Anu (Prabha)—and their coworker, cook Parvaty (Kadam), Kapadia’s film alights on moments of connection and heartache, hope and disappointment. Capturing metropolitan bustle and the open-air tranquility of a seaside village with equal radiance, All We Imagine as Light is a soulful study of the transformative power of friendship and sisterhood, in all its complexities and richness.