Payal Kapadia on Her Gently Radical Drama All We Imagine as Light

On May 26, India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi congratulated filmmaker Payal Kapadia on the Cannes success of All We Imagine as Light, her drama slated for U.S. release on Nov. 15. Not only was it the first Indian film to play in competition at Cannes in 30 years, it also became the first to win the festival's coveted Grand Prix, its ostensible silver medal. In his statement, Modi mentioned Kapadia's graduate film school, the government-aided Film and Television Institute of India (or FTII), and the "rich creativity in India." From a distance, it seemed like a bog-standard message of celebration and even institutional support. But a closer look reveals its hypocrisy, given both the government's past treatment of Kapadia, and of Indian filmmaking at large.

In 2015, Kapadia was one of 35 students arrested after protesting the Modi regime's choice of a new FTII chairman. "A lot of us got into trouble with the police," the filmmaker recalls. "But again, it's a very normal part of our Indian life. You protest, you get in trouble." The arrests took place on day 68 of a nearly 5-month demonstration against the government's appointee, the actor-turned-politician Gajendra Chauhan, owing to his deep connection to Modi's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), his lack of experience in cinema compared to the previous chairman, and what several students saw as blatant overreach. Kapadia would subsequently be stripped of her scholarship and the chance to participate in a foreign exchange program. She eventually completed her education, and FTII even went on to financially support her travel to Cannes in 2017, along with her short film, Afternoon Clouds. However, the criminal case against her, and against several dozen fellow students, remains open. 

Since then, Kapadia has made films on the margins of India's movie industries. In order to do so, she's had to seek foreign funding (much of it French), telling stories that directly rebuke India's political institutions. This was readily apparent in her debut feature, the black and white docufiction A Night of Knowing Nothing, a dramatized story set against the very real backdrop of the aforementioned student protests, which the movie chronicles in vivid detail. This film also debuted at Cannes in 2021, where it premiered in the Directors' Fortnight section, and won the L'Œil d'or award for Best Documentary.

Kapadia’s criticism of India and its political structures is the overarching context from which her latest work emerges. All We Imagine as Light is her first narrative feature, and it follows a trio of working-class women in Mumbai: two migrant nurses from the southern state of Kerala, and a hospital peon from a nearby coastal village. It's a gentle and luminous drama about sisterhood in modern India, imbued with a kind of transience, as characters come and go from the country's financial metropolis. However, it's arguably just as political as Kapadia's protest chronicle.

Nestled within its tale of intergenerational female friendship is a subplot about one of the nurses, Anu (Divya Prabha). The twenty-something Hindu woman becomes romantically involved with a young Muslim man, Shiaz (Hridhu Haroon), to the chagrin of her middle-aged roommate Prabha (Kani Kusruti). Prabha doesn't make her objections explicit, but she tiptoes around the idea of how Anu's romance might be perceived outside of their domestic sanctum. This anxiety conjures the fear-mongering idea of the "love jihad" conspiracy spread by right-wing Hindu nationalists, which accuses Muslim men of forcefully marrying and converting Hindu women. No character says as much out loud, but the fear of these false accusations lingers just out of frame; the issue is so charged and prevalent in modern India that it feels implicit in the images Kapadia presents.

This subtle visual approach is the film’s default lingua Franca, with Kapadia refraining from imbuing the dialogue itself with explicit political overtones. For instance, the first time Kapadia introduces us to Shiaz's heavily Muslim neighborhood, her establishing shot features a few frames of a bulldozer passing by, a fleeting image that might bring to mind the BJP government’s recent clearings of Muslim neighborhoods, which have turned the bulldozer into a widespread symbol of Muslim oppression. One such vehicle was even decorated in BJP insignia and trotted out during an India Day Parade in Edison, New Jersey in 2022.

"The mise en scène is a big part of the language of the film," Kapadia explains. "Not in terms of the visual language, but the political language. It adds a lot of layers that I think subliminally affect the viewer."

Kapadia adds that the bulldozer has a “double meaning.” In another subplot, Anu and Prabha's older friend and hospital co-worker Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam), whose late husband handled all their assets and documents, is on the verge of being evicted from her home of 20 years, thanks to ruthless developers seeking to construct new high-rises for Mumbai's wealthy elite. Real estate billboards loom large over the characters, as reminders of what they might lose, and what the moneyed ruling class thinks they deserve. In addition to evoking sympathy for Shiaz, by hinting at the dangers he faces as part of India’s Muslim community, "the bulldozer… is probably going to break down another building somewhere," the filmmaker explains.

In All We Imagine as Light, the key sources of personal drama are the boundaries between people and the inequities driven like wedges between members of different classes, castes, religious communities, and genders. Prabha, for example, is married, but her husband—who she barely knew before their union was arranged—now lives abroad and barely speaks to her. She's forced to grin and bear this strange situation, lest she draw the ire of society at large. Divorce is frowned upon in India, so when Prabha is courted by a charming coworker, Dr. Manoj (Azees Nedumangad), she has little choice but to rebuke him. Each of the movie's characters is a victim of broader social circumstances, but their kinship cuts through these divisions. According to Kapadia, the themes woven throughout her movies stem from her own introspection, rooted in the wish fulfillment of "what ifs.”

"I have a lot of questions about myself and the world around me. Cinema becomes a way to try to answer those questions," Kapadia explains. "Some of it is questioning how I have behaved in certain situations, where I think it was not the best. Somewhere in Prabha and Anu's relationship is the troubles I've had with generational friendships with women. I think it comes from a sadness and self-reflexivity, and the need to address how I'm troubled by myself, and by things around me."

"The personal is political," a term coined by second-wave feminists in the 1960s, is a long-held aphorism that holds entirely true for Kapadia's work. While A Night of Knowing Nothing saw her turn her lens toward the world around her, its tale of student demonstrations also follows the fictitious story of an anonymous FTII alumnus, "L," whose romantic letters and old film reels detail the deeply entwined politics and artistry of the institute's student body. In bringing L's troubles to light, Kapadia crafts a saga of young lovers torn apart by divisions of caste, a story that dovetails into the central protest narrative.

In All We Imagine as Light, the romantic and domestic struggles of Anu, Prabha, and Parvaty may be deeply personal, but they're intrinsically rooted in the many ways in which the lives of Indian women are politicized. The way in which Islamophobes might target Shiaz also denies Anu her agency, while her coworkers' prudish gossip seeks to place conservative restraints on her sex life. Societal pressures around matrimony keep Prabha bound to a phantom, and Parvaty losing her home is tied to the perception of her husband as the sole owner of her property; so long as she lacks the necessary paperwork to prove otherwise, she's denied personhood too.

In presenting the lives of her female protagonists in such vivid detail, Kapadia's depictions become somewhat radical when viewed in the context of Indian cinema's censorious and conservative norms. The movie's approach to bare breasts, female body hair, and bodily functions (like women urinating), is both gentle and frank, flying in the face of the supposed "modesty" to which Indian women are often forced to adhere, on-screen and off. Kapadia, however, claims that challenging sensibilities wasn't her primary goal; rather, it was a byproduct of her cinematic worldview. "The motivation is not about changing anybody's mind, but trying to present a world that I feel is not represented enough in what I see," Kapadia says.

The film ties nudity not just to desire, but to autonomy, in ways that go beyond sexuality. A scene in which Anu and Prabha argue features the former disrobing in their shared bathroom, causing a distracting sense of discomfort for Anu’s older roommate. "It's more like she's attacking Prabha with her nudity, because she knows what effect it'll have on her," Kapadia explains. “I wanted this autonomy of her desire to be topless.” Conversely, when Anu makes love to Shiaz, she remains partially clothed, a decision that has less to do with censorship, and more to do with Anu's agency. "In the sex scene, she's not nude because she doesn't want to be.” 

Kapadia's films offer new avenues into the most intimate parts of Indian women's lives, and the way politics affect them. However, when asked if she sees herself, or her filmmaking, as radical, she's reluctant to adopt such labels. "I don't like to make myself into some kind of hero or martyr," she says. "I feel so conflicted. I don't think cinema can really change anything in a country like ours. It's groundwork [that changes things] and working for the people within communities. And what does film really do? I don't know."

Kapadia's movies aren't just telling stories about protesting the status quo. They function as acts of protest in and of themselves, especially since the Indian cinema scene is often hostile to smaller arthouse pictures—and particularly those that seek to challenge government norms. What can be done to give these stories a better chance? "Complete structural overhaul?" Kapadia jokes. Then again, it may not be such a bad idea, if it leads to films like hers being more widely made and seen.