118 minutes, opens exclusively at The Projector on Nov 14 ★★★★☆ The story: Two Malayali nurses in Mumbai negotiate their daily working-class grind. A neo-realist drama by Payal Kapadia, the first Indian feature in 30 years to compete at the Cannes Film Festival won the 2024 Grand Prix. Conscientious head nurse Prabha (Kani Kusruti) and young, flirty Anu (Divya Prabha) are flatmates in All We Imagine As Light, as well as colleagues at a hospital maternity ward.
Prabha is troubled at the arrival by post of a mysterious rice cooker, presumably from her husband, who has made no contact since moving to Germany after their arranged marriage: Is this his break-up token? Anu is, meanwhile, secretly seeing a young Muslim man (Hridhu Haroon). This is a story about absence in India’s most populous city, a metropolis of teeming bazaars and packed metro cars recorded in all its sensuous textures by Kapadia’s impressionistic camera: the Indian writer-director is the documentarian behind A Night Of Knowing Nothing (2021). It is not only the men they love who are absent or unavailable, but also the women’s emotional autonomy and any warmth of home.
Prabha and Anu are among the millions of anonymous economic migrants passing through. Another is the widowed hospital cook Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam), who finds herself evicted from her apartment of 22 years to make way for a luxury condo. Prabha and Anu accompany Parvaty back to her native village on the coast, away from the urban noc.
