Early in All We Imagine as Light , Anu (Divya Prabha) asks her boyfriend Shiaz (Hridhu Haroon) to send her kisses through the clouds so that when it rains, they reach her lips. The frequent precipitation in Mumbai, however, resonates primarily as tears in Payal Kapadia’s stunning feature, a portrait of female loneliness, longing, and suffering that derives its power from its subtle lyricism and heartfelt empathy. A quiet tale of three women’s ordeals in a modern society that constrains them in ways both overt and understated, this festival standout—winner of the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival —resounds like a lament and concludes, tenderly, with an upbeat sigh.
Over snapshots of throngs moving around the city at night, All We Imagine as Light , in theaters Nov. 15, presents the voices of Mumbai inhabitants discussing their feelings about the metropolis for which they left their small villages. According to one unnamed speaker, money and food are the main reasons these transplants have arrived in India’s financial capital, but there’s little joy in their comments, just as there’s almost none in the countenance of Prabha (Kani Kusruti), who works as a nurse at a hospital alongside her colleague Anu, with whom she also shares a flat.
Prabha is a somber woman who’s introduced reporting on a patient for not taking her medication. That senior citizen’s hallucinations about her dead husband mark her as a kindred spirit to her caretaker, insofar as Prabha is.