Review - In All We Imagine as Light, two Malayalam nurses are flatting together in a tiny apartment in modern day Mumbai. One day a box arrives unexpectedly on their doorstep, addressed to the older one, Prabha (played by Kani Kusruti). It's a flash rice cooker and it has been sent direct from an online retailer, so the benefactor isn't obvious.
Prabha knows, however, that a German appliance like this has probably come from her husband, who is working there but who hasn't been in contact with her since their arranged marriage a year ago. The presence of this machine is upsetting to the usually calm and self-possessed senior nurse. Does it mean that he is coming back? Or is going to call for her? Or is it a farewell gift, a kind of apology for an arrangement that hasn't worked out.
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Prabha is still young and has a suitor - a doctor at the hospital where she works - but she takes her vows seriously and considers herself to be a married woman. Where does all this leave her?
Meanwhile, her younger flatmate Anu (played by Divya Prabha) is in a secret relationship with a young Muslim man (played by Hridhu Haroon). She is in the full bloom of young romance but it's unclear what sort of future there is in either of their communities for a relationship like that.
And there is a third woman, older Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam), who is a cook at the hospital but who is being threatened with eviction from her tenement flat after the death of her husband.
Kani Kusruti as Prabha and Divya Prabha as Anu in All We Imagine as Light. Photo: Janus Films
These are women whose stories are rarely told on screen at all, let alone with such grace and such tenderness. Mumbai has a population of over 12 million people and there's a ruthlessness about life there. Prabha, Anu, Pravaty and their friends do their best to maintain a social and professional community but it's only when they leave the city for Pravaty's home village, over 350km away, that they truly become themselves.
Director Payal Kapadia is, famously, the first Indian woman to win a prize at Cannes - All We Imagine as Light won the Grand Prix in 2024 - and the film leans on her documentary experience to provide angles and framing that reflect the bustle and complexity of this world, but the interior lives of these women is what I found most impressive.
In a much-criticised move, the Film Federation of India decided not to submit All We Imagine as Light as their selection for the Best International Feature Oscar, despite all the accolades it has received and the fact that it would have been a clear frontrunner.
Divya Prabha in the character of Anu and Hridhu Haroon in All We Imagine as Light. Photo: Janus Films
The argument the federation made was that All We Imagine as Light felt to them like a European film made about India, rather than an Indian film, and despite many of the creatives on the picture being Indian (including writer-director Kapadia and cinematographer Ranabir Das), I have some sympathy for this idea but it's also constraining. All We Imagine as Light certainly reminded me of films by women like Chantal Akerman and Agnes Varda (although arguably more optimistic than many of their pictures), and most of the budget and the script development was found in Europe, but cultural gatekeepers deciding what constitutes 'real' Indian cinema is unhelpful to everyone, I think.
One final thought - I was told the other day that there are five different languages spoken in the film but apart from one mention of a doctor having trouble learning Hindi, that aspect of the film doesn't come through particularly well. I've seen recent film and television where filmmakers have found ways to indicate through different subtitle formats or colours which language was being spoken but that doesn't happen here.
I would love to have known when these women were passing through different worlds and which of those worlds they were most at ease in, but my linguistic ignorance took that aspect of the film out of the equation.
All We Imagine as Light is rated M for sex scenes, offensive language and nudity and is screening in cinemas now.
