The lives of three women nurses are front and center in Payal Kapadia’s luminous Mumbai-set drama.  

Prabha (Kani Kusruti) works long hours to avoid thinking about her husband, who left for Germany long ago and eventually stopped calling. Her younger roommate, Anu (Divya Prabha), spends her evenings with her Muslim boyfriend, while dodging calls from her parents, who are looking to set her up with a Hindi husband. Meanwhile, Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam), an older widow, is being pushed out of her home by greedy property developers.

Winner of the Grand Prix at this year’s Cannes Film Festival (the first female-directed Indian film in the festival’s main competition section), All We Imagine as Light derives considerable power from its steady accumulation of daily life, and is a moving portrait of resistance and camaraderie, in a film that finds beauty and solace in the unlikeliest of places, in an illuminating portrait of friendship and sisterhood. All We Imagine as Light focuses on three women whose lives overlap in the vast metropolis that is Mumbai, in this sensitive drama.

Charles Coleman, FACETS Film Program Director has selected All We Imagine as Light as one of his 2024 Top Ten Films.