As I wait for my interview with filmmaker Payal Kapadia to commence, I hear the clouds cackle. And right on cue, on a warm summer evening in Sydney, it begins to rain. I smile, thinking that perhaps this be-mausam barsaat [unexpected occurrence] is just how lovers separated from each other converse, like young Anu sending kisses to her boyfriend Shiaz through the rain clouds of Mumbai in Kapadia’s 2024 Cannes Grand Prix winning feature All We Imagine as Light.
Last year, Kapadia scripted history when she became the first Indian filmmaker in over forty years to win an award in the Cannes Main Competition lineup. The great Mrinal Sen won the Jury Prize in 1983 for his film, Kharij.
Post its Cannes triumph, All We Imagine as Light scored Best International Feature wins from the New York Film Critics Circle, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, the Chicago Film Critics Association and the San Diego Film Critics Society. It emerged as the best film of 2024 in The New York Times, the Associated Press, the Sight & Sound magazine, and the Film Comment critics poll.
More recently, Kapadia can add becoming a Golden Globes nominated director to her already impressive resumé. What these accolades cannot capture, however, is the boundless joy and gratitude that Indian cinema lovers from across the globe have felt in their hearts, watching and cheering for the film’s success on the world stage.
A call to reclaim their personhood and identity for all who have become invisible in contemporary India, Kapadia’s stunning film frames the search for intimacy for our three female protagonists Anu, Prabha and Parvathy—each with their own longings and tribulations—as an act of dissent in a country preoccupied with socially and morally policing their every move. The film, with its original canvas and quiet, but determined subversiveness, stands apart from everything that’s come to define Indian cinema.
Kapadia borrows the film’s title from her mother Nalini Malani’s painting of the same name. However, once we go beyond the obvious, more interesting threads emerge. Evoking the words of Kashmiri poet Agha Shahid Ali—‘your history gets in the way of my memory’ (from Ali’s poem Farewell)—one of the areas of inquiry in Malani’s work is investigating how the history of a particular region (war-torn Kashmir) keeps getting rewritten and reshaped over time. Kapadia’s Mumbai is not a static monolith either. The mythology of the city—whether it is envisioned as a ‘city of dreams’ or a ‘city of illusions’—is moulded by the experiences of the thousands of migrants inhabiting it.
“While making films you are also documenting a space in a particular time,” Kapadia says.
“That is fundamentally what I like to do and what I'm interested in, which is recording of that time. A city like Mumbai is one which is in a state of flux. The shape of the city is changing as we speak.
“A lot of the stations that you see in the movie, like Charni Road for example, it is no longer called Charni Road Station. That's how Mumbai is. We are always changing the identity of these streets and other places to erase the history of what they were,” she adds.
In mid-2024, the Maharashtra Legislative Council passed a resolution to rename several local train stations, including Charni Road, which is now called Girgaon. The government argued that the original names of these places were unwelcome reminders of a colonial legacy. These are not the first changes that Mumbai has experienced, and renaming of local areas as well as entire cities has been a widespread occurrence all across India in the recent past. Critics argue these steps are part of a broader push by the Hindu-nationalist government over the past decade to reinterpret and rewrite Indian history through a majoritarian lens.
“I'm always interested in whose history is it and how we tend to think of this city [Mumbai] as a grand gesture, when in actuality, it is being made by so many people who have come from all over the country to live and work in it,” says Kapadia.
“I'm not a unique storyteller of this city. So many people have written about it. So many people have drawn inspiration from what the city stands for. It's hard to make a movie about Mumbai and not talk about its past, its present, its future and all its contradictions that emerge through that. That’s what I wanted to do and will continue to do in whatever films I make.
“Because as a filmmaker, you're only thinking about these things: the space that you inhabit and the questions you have about it. These questions propel me to make movies,” she adds.
One way to read the film is that it strives to realise how meaningful connections between people, especially women, can be forged beyond the traditional framework of what Indian social structures allow and permit. Anu, Prabha and Parvathy have all slipped through the cracks—Anu has a Muslim boyfriend she must hide from prying eyes, Prabha seeks closure from her estranged husband, and Parvathy is about to be evicted from her family home. The desires of each of these women operate outside the contours of what is deemed acceptable by the status quo. Kapadia frames the idea of friendship between these characters as a radical act: not only is friendship a refuge that lifts the burden of living up to unrealistic expectations, it’s also an opportunity to start a completely new relationship where the rules are not yet fully defined.
“It frustrates me that in our country [India], it's always the immediate identity that keeps us away from each other,” says Kapadia.
“I think Mumbai is a city where the potential for connections beyond one's immediate identity is possible. It doesn't always happen, because the city is also very segregated. But I feel that there is a potential, a utopian idea, that this is possible.
“Friendship for me is an interesting relationship because in our country, all other relationships are so coded. When you ask what is a ‘mother’ or what is a ‘father’—these phrases have a lot of baggage around what these things mean in our culture, history and storytelling. But friendship is still open. It's not a relationship that has been written or talked about that much.
“I was thinking that if there is not that much of a definition, we can decide for ourselves how we want our friendships to be. It really depends on just the two people involved and no one else. So that gives a lot of possibilities for connection,” adds Kapadia.
The first time I experienced All We Imagine as Light in theatres, it emotionally overwhelmed me. And the reason was deceptively simple—the male characters that Kapadia chose to ‘hero’ in her film. I was pleasantly shocked—this remains the most interesting act of dissent the film pulls off—to witness two of the most gentlest male love interests on screen in the form of Dr Manoj and Shiaz, in a mainstream Indian cinema landscape that’s increasingly being dominated by portrayals of men as loud, shouty baboons.
Much has been written about how mainstream Indian cinema across regional industries frames female characters as mere props, plot devices or eye candy. But the male characters on screen haven’t fared any better. There’s a ‘sameness’ about how men are presented on screen to Indian mainstream moviegoers, which I struggle to relate with or understand. The presence of emotionally vulnerable and quieter men like Dr Manoj and Shiaz was a breath of fresh air. It’s not until I saw them did I realise that this is what was missing for so long!
“The men who are causing all the problems, I decided to keep them off screen,” says Kapadia.
“The system allows these people [men] who are not even physically there to control women's lives. The men that are causing all these problems are basically either phantoms or husbands that live far away, but they are still impacting women,” she says.
Despite inklings of a possible romance with Dr Manoj, Prabha cannot take the next step as the ghost of her estranged husband hovers over her life. Parvathy’s husband is also a phantom presence—she must find evidence of her property’s paperwork he left behind before passing away to save herself from getting evicted from her family home. Even after his death, Parvathy’s husband is influencing the quality of her life.
“The men that I decided to keep on screen, I like them. I wanted to have the ideal kind of men that I like. They are softer, gentler, and more poetic. Maybe even a little utopian in their representation. But why not,” asserts Kapadia.
“I sent the script to my editor [Clément Pinteaux] who is also a very gentle boy. I told him that I was worried. What do we do about these guys? What about Shiaz? Does he seem too sweet? There’s nothing else about him besides he's so cute and sweet.
“He said, ‘Look Payal. There are so many movies with the girl next door. She's only there to be sweet. So now, you do the boy next door who's very cute and sweet, and that's it.’ So, I agreed.
“A lot of men, not just in our country, become victims of patriarchy too. They may not want to take up those super masculine roles that they are expected to, be it in the West or in India. Everybody suffers from it [patriarchy],” says Kapadia.
“I want to add to that—these phantom men I’m talking about,” elaborates Kapadia.
“When I was doing the research for this film and from all the stories I was collecting, I met a girl who used to work close to my house. She told me that she used to always wear a sari, a polyester sari, which can be very hot in the summer of Mumbai when it gets really humid.
“She would see me and say that it's so nice that you wear a Salwar Kamiz. So I told her that you should also wear a Salwar Kamiz. She said that no, she couldn’t wear Salwar Kamiz because her father-in-law, who is sitting in Ratnagiri, would be upset. But I told her that he's not here. She said that no, I still can't do it,” recounts Kapadia.
“Then, many months passed and I met her again. And she was wearing Salwar Kamiz. So I said, ‘Oh wow! Good that you defied your father-in-law.’ And she said that she didn't defy him. Father-in-law off ho gaya [the father-in-law passed away]. And that got me thinking—this lady earns really well, she is somebody who is financially independent. And yet, her stupid father-in-law was sitting in some village and controlling her attire in Mumbai. I mean, he had to die for her to be able to wear what she liked!”
All We Imagine as Light is Kapadia’s love letter to Mumbai. Drawing from other filmmakers who have made their own ‘city films’—the blue haze engulfing Mumbai in the first half of the film is a nice hat tip to Wong Kar Wai’s blue neon from Chungking Express, the long track shots of an alienating Mumbai remind you of Chantal Akerman’s News From Home—Kapadia adds her own spin to what a city film could embody, ensuring that her characters’ experiences always remain at the forefront.
“I was trying to see the city through the characters’ eyes,” says Kapadia.
“For Anu, the darkness of the city is a kind of a refuge. It gives her the possibility to be anonymous and have her little sexual expeditions. So, when we look at it from Anu’s eyes, I wanted the city to have that sparkle. When Anu and Shiaz go to Mohammed Ali Road, for example, there's a kind of a nice feeling in the air. It makes the city more wonderful than it actually is,” she explains.
“I'm a romantic. When it’s the beginning of a romance, even the most banal things seem so nice. You remember that one bus journey you took. You don't mind that there is a traffic jam because you can sit a little bit longer on the bus. You remember the park where you're hiding behind the bushes. You remember little things that smell a bit like [the idea of] peace. Things become more tolerable when you are in the company of a person you are romantically interested in. So, I wanted to look at the city through those eyes,” Kapadia adds.
“When it came to Prabha, one of the things that she sees most about the city is this aspect of travelling from the south to the north, and that’s like a long track shot through the city. So we tried to keep that. Prabha is not wandering around. She's been in the city for almost ten years. She's probably not even seen the places that Anu has seen because she is just not that kind of person.
“When Prabha looks out of the window, she’s just looking at other people's windows and that's it. I wanted to look at the city through these different characters and how subjectively, the same light can feel different for two people just because of the feelings they have,” says Kapadia.
The soundtrack for the film (with OST by Topshe) has a hypnotic quality, threading together the vignette-like structure of the film, giving the narrative a sense of coherence amidst the city’s alienating maze. The music of the film weaves together disparate styles that have little in common—from Ethiopian piano, Haitian guitar and 80s synth—in a way that they come across as part of a melancholic whole. It’s fitting that a film about how different migrant experiences come together to frame the mythology of one city would utlise musical segments from various parts of the world to evoke a sense of shared nostalgia.
“The reason I decided to work with Topshe was because he does use in his own music this slightly 80s synth vibe. And I think I'm a very 80s synth person,” says Kapadia.
“So, it's just a matter of choice that I really like synth music and simple instrumentation that is not fussy—with a lot of instruments—but rather, it has a memorable tone. These are things like a music box or a xylophone that you played with when you were children. The recordings of a hold tune—when your phone is on hold—the older ones, for some reason, I used to really like that as a kid.
“I like to collect from everywhere. It doesn't matter if it [the music] is Indian or not. I feel like these are little shiny objects I want to put in the movie. Whether it's Japanese experimental music or it's Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou’s piano [see the opening segment of ‘The Homeless Wanderer’] or the Haitian Song that plays on the guitar [see Frantz Casseus’ ‘Suite No.1: Yanvalloux’]. These tracks have this quality, for me at least, of evoking a sense of nostalgia.
“And I got into the habit of looking for music because of my previous movie, ‘A Night or Knowing Nothing’, which was again, just taking a lot of random music from here and there, which gave me that sense of nostalgia. Romance and nostalgia is what I look for. And if it's 80s synth, it's totally up my alley,” adds Kapadia.
But, Kapadia hasn’t entirely given up on the idea of using songs as a narrative device. We get a small hint of what to expect in the future—when the three women leave Mumbai and arrive in Ratnagiri, Anu and Parvathy dance to the R.D. Burman composition ‘Daiya Yeh Main Kahaa Aa Phasi’ as a bewildered Prabha watches from the sidelines. If you pay close attention to the lyrics of this song from the 1971 Hindi-language film Caravan, you realise it’s a song where the female protagonist is singing about feeling trapped in a situation from where there’s no escape. Like most things in the film, the choice of this song in particular, is no coincidence.
“I think it’s quite amazing as to what we do in our movies with songs,” says Kapadia.
“I'm very interested in directors who use songs as a narrative device. If you see somebody like [filmmaker] Pa. Ranjith, in many of his movies, the song becomes a kind of a montage sequence to take the story forward. I'm always interested in the lyrics and how well it's done.
“I think in the next movie I'll try to find some way to write lyrics and have a song, because I actually like that as well,” concludes Kapadia.
All We Imagine as Light plays as part of the 2025 Perth Festival from Monday, 27 January to Sunday, 2 February.