Film Forum

In a vast, heaving Mumbai that bustles by day and glimmers by night, two nurses — roommates by chance — form a makeshift sisterhood. Proper, practical Prabha grieves her estranged marriage but holds her teeming desires (and an eager suitor) at bay; youthful, sensuous Anu cherishes secret text messages and steamy trysts with a Muslim boy. Meanwhile, a no-nonsense neighbor whose widowhood leaves her struggling to keep her flat recruits the two younger women to her village by the sea — where all three find unlikely refuge in the clarity of shared wanting, if not having.

2024     118 MIN.     FRANCE / INDIA / NETHERLANDS / LUXEMBOURG
SIDESHOW / JANUS FILMS     IN MALAYALAM AND HINDI WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES          

Reviews

“Cause for celebration…so delicately felt and sensuously textured…with a quiet truthfulness that, like the glittering lights of the city, lingers expansively in the memory.”
– Justin Chang, The New Yorker (ranking ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT as #2 of all films in Competition at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival)

“This is a glorious film… There is a freshness and emotional clarity in [ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT], an enriching humanity and gentleness which coexist with fervent, languorous eroticism.”
– Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian (UK)

“A romantic, sumptuous and culturally complex character study of three women… Visually transportive…vibrantly capturing the streets of Mumbai and the verdant tangle of the jungle with equal care…already stands as an early majestic masterwork, told with incredible control and uncommon force of will.”
– Robert Daniels, RogerEbert.com

“The heat, hustle, glory and grind of modern-day Mumbai give way to something all the more mysterious and ever so beguiling in Payal Kapadia’s ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT…an expansive and intimate feature.”
– Ben Croll, The Wrap

“Kapadia has established her rare talent for finding passages of exquisite poetry within the banal blank verse of everyday Indian life.” ­
– Jessica Kiang, Variety