Aseem Chhabra, Cannes,Film writer
BBCThe new movie from Indian director Payal Kapadia features modern Mumbai street scenes.
However, All We Imagine as Light does not depict the wealthy, well-off Mumbai of Bollywood actors and billionaires in business. Otherwise, the director uses voices of actual refugees from Mumbai, who are the town’s beat, to represent the street scenes.
This is Kapadia’s first narrative picture, and it was shown at the Cannes Film Festival’s primary competition section on Thursday evening. Standing ovations were given for the entire eight-minute movie.
It’s a major success for the cinematographer, and also for India. For the first time in 30 years has an Indian film participated in Cannes ‘ main competitors area. Kapadia, 38, stock the fame and the possibility of winning one of the show’s exclusive prizes with the likes of Francis Ford Coppola, Yorgos Lanthimos, Ali Abbasi, Jacques Audiard, and Jia Zhangke.
American films have performed quite well on the global festival circuit over the past four decades.
Mira Nair’s Salaam Bombay won the Lens d’Or at the 1988 Cannes Film Festival. A few days before the September 11 terrorist assaults, Nair’s 2001 typical Monsoon Wedding won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.
The Lunchbox, a famous film from Ritesh Batra’s 2013 video, received the Grand Golden Rail Award at Cannes. Additionally, earlier this year, Women May Be Ladies, a directorial debut from Shuchi Talati, won the Grand Jury and Audience medals at the Sundance Film Festival.
India, the biggest film-producing nation in the world, has so far been left out of the race to win Palm d’Or or one of the other important Cannes prizes. This year, owing to Kapadia’s wonderfully realised and moving picture, India stands a good chance of winning.
Now there are many glowing reviews online. The Guardian in its five- sun assessment describes it as “glorious … an absorbing history full of humanity”. The critic compares the movie to Aranyer Din Ratri ( Days and Nights in the Forest ) and Satyajit Ray’s Mahanagar ( The Big City ). Kapadia’s drama, according to IndieWire’s A-grade review, gives Mumbai a romantic eye, which is demonstrated by the way “people occupy their place …whether alone or sharing.”
Kapadia, the daughter of a well-known American musician, is well-versed in Mumbai, a city with a different and multiracial population.
In contrast to many different locations in the country, Kapadia claims,” It’s also a position where it’s a little bit easier for women to work.”
” I wanted to make a movie about people who leave their homes to labor elsewhere,” said the director.
In All We Know as Gentle, Kapadia follows the life and hardships of two southern Indian nurses who work in a hospital and reside up in a cramped, cramped flat in Mumbai.
One nurse – Prabha ( Kani Kusruti, who played a supporting role in Girls Will Be Girls )- is married. Her father, who resides in Germany, hardly ever speaks to her. But her husband’s surprise surprise, a corn cook, arrives unexpectedly. She hugs the system, as if it is the next sign of love in her marriage.
The second nurse, Anu ( Divya Prabha ), is more adventurous and is carrying a secret romance with a young Muslim man Shiaz ( a charming young actor, Hridhu Haroon ) who is also from Kerala.
Anu is Hindu, and her family did not approve of their relationship with Shiaz.
Anu and Shiaz cannot be in a private area in Mumbai due to 22 million persons clamouring for place and the terrible monsoon season.
But then suddenly a third hospital nurse, Parvaty ( Chhaya Kadam, who appeared in two films at Cannes this year ), decides to leave the city, forced to do so by the wealthy’s redevelopment of a slum.
Was this offer a chance to alter the course of these characters’ existence?
The challenges of students Kapadia documented in her most recent movie, a video titled A Night of Knowing Nothing, are not different from those of negotiation space.
The movie made its debut at the Cannes festival’s Managers ‘ Fortnight side section in 2022. It won the L’Œil d’or” Golden Eye”, the show’s best documentary honor.
Following the 2015 student strike at the country’s exclusive government-run Film and Television Institute of India, A Night of Knowing Zero followed. Kapadia participated in the attack, and she received her education in direction in 2018.
In an appointment in 2022, she described the film as a “love notice to public institutions and what they stand for – a place where people of all strata of society can be together and relish independence, both intellectual and physical.”
All We Imagine as Light has a comparable message to it.