Ajit Rai/Cannes

This was India's week at the 77th Cannes Film Festival. After, the Kannada film Sunflowers Were the First Once to Know by Chidanand S.S. Nayak of the Film and Television Institute of India, (FTII), Pune, received the Best Film Award in the Le Cinefon Cinefondation section (Short film) on the weekend Filmmaker Payal Kapadia made history at the Festival as her drama, "All We Imagine as Light," clinched the prestigious Grand Prix award.

The film, marking Kapadia's directorial debut, secured its place in cinematic lore as the first Indian film in three decades and the first ever by an Indian women director to grace the festival's main competition. It was after 30 year that an Indian Director's film was selected in the competition category in the Prestigious festival

Despatch from Cannes

In 2021, her documentary A Night of Knowing Nothing was selected for the Directors' Fortnight of the Cannes Film Festival. It also received the Golden Eye Award for Best Documentary. However, this time Payal Kapadia has created history as she is here in the league of the world's leading filmmakers like Francis Ford Coppola, who made the cult film Godfather, Oscar winner Paulo Sorrentino, Michael Hadjavicius and Zia Jhanke, Ali Abbasi, Jacques Odiar, David Cronenberg selected in the competition section. Distributors and buyers from all over the world have shown interest in her film.

Payal Kapadia and actors of her film with the award at the Cannes International Film Festival

Payal Kapadia's All We Imagine as Light had its grand premiere at the Grand Theater Lumiere on Thursday evening. The audience welcomed the film by a record 8-minute standing ovation. Payal Kapadia and her team were given a grand and ceremonial red carpet as instrumental music played on. Cannes Film Festival director Thierry Frame welcomed the team with profuse praises and later, at his press conference, he spoke about the production process of the film. 

The film revolves around Prabha and Anu, two women from Kerala who work as nurses in Mumbai and share a one-room kitchen (One RK). The lead roles are played by Kani Kasturi, Divya Prabha, Chhaya Kadam, Hridhur Haroon etc. Ranbir Das's cinematography is excellent and retains focus. Mumbai's crowd, sky, clouds, rain, wind, and sea along with the sounds of this neighborhood are transformed into innumerable characters of the film through Ranbir Das's camera.

The sisterhood of two women who came to Mumbai from remote Kerala to work as nurses is unmatched. Their shared activities in a small room create a new world. Before the elder nurse, Prabha could understand anything, her family got her married. Soon after the marriage, her husband went to Germany and she never heard from him, again. Prabha is waiting and hopeful that one day her husband will return. 

A scene from Payal Kapadia's film

A Malayali doctor at her hospital is attracted to her but Prabha spurns his gestures. One day the women receive a parcel from Germany. Prabha's husband has sent her a gift after years. The women are shocked.

Young nurse Anu falls in love with Shiyaz, a Muslim boy who has come to Mumbai from Kerala. She keeps searching for solitude to meet him. Another middle-aged woman has been cheated by the builder because she has no documentary evidence of the money deposited by her late husband for the property.

Ranbir Das's camera is focused on his characters even when it gives the sense of a crowd around. Starting from the vegetable market, the movement of the local railway, the crowd boarding and alighting from the local train, the train passing through the crowded streets, the two nurses frying fish in the small kitchen and washing clothes in the bathroom, looking at the void while sleeping on the bed. The audience can feel every emotion.

Despite living together in Mumbai, loneliness never leaves the women. Payal Kapadia has kept the pace of the film slow so that the images and scenes can leave a deep impression on the minds of the audience. There is no overt violence anywhere, but the blanket of sorrow that has accumulated like the filth of life is spread throughout the environment. 

Indian actors and filmmakers celebrating success at the Cannes International Film festival

In one scene, Anu sends a kiss to her lover through the clouds from the window of the house. In another scene, she buys a black burqa to go to her lover's house. Halfway through the journey, she gets a message from her lover that her family's wedding plan has been cancelled. Anu's disappointment is understandable. 

ALSO READ: 12 Indian film marketed at the Cannes Film festival

Prabha and Anu plan a trip with the betrayed middle-aged woman to a sea town outside Mumbai. Anu also calls her lover so that she will get a chance to spend quiet time with him. One afternoon an unconscious man is found lying on the seashore. Destiny is continuously taking away the light from the lives of these women. Prabha also tells Anu that Mumbai is a city of illusions and all those who don’t believe in illusions will go mad here. In such a big city, two women are looking for light while darkness is increasing all around them.