Critics' Review: 'All We Imagine As Light' Transcends The Limits of Reality

International critics praise Kapadia's film for its emotional depth and storytelling.

All We Imagine As Light directed by Payal Kapadia won the Palm d'Or prize at the Cannes Film Festival 2024. This award-winning film is set in Mumbai and tells the story of two nurses from Kerela who came to Mumbai to work in a hospital. The film scripted history as it received an eight-minute-long standing ovation after it was screened at the festival.

The film is the first in 30 years to be nominated in the main category and to win the award. Kapadia was also the first Indian female filmmaker to win this award.

Let's take a look at what International critics have to say about the film.

"There is a freshness and emotional clarity in Payal Kapadia’s Cannes competition selection, an enriching humanity and gentleness which coexist with fervent, languorous eroticism and finally something epiphanic in the later scenes and mysterious final moments. Kapadia’s storytelling has something of Satyajit Ray’s The Big City and Days and Nights of the Forest; it is so fluent and absorbing."

Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

"All We Imagine as Light gradually transcends the limits of reality to question the nature of life itself. By taking Prabha and Anu out of Mumbai, even temporarily, Kapadia takes away the overwhelming sensory assault of urban life that stifles contemplation. (“Do you ever think about the future?” asks Prabha. “I feel like the future is here and I’m not prepared for it,” Anu replies.) The oblique title, mysterious but somehow magical, captures what Kapadia is getting at without being too on the nose. And at a time when so much attention is being paid to the lives of the haves and the have-nots at a time of such financial imbalance worldwide, it’s refreshing to see the spotlight on ordinary women caught somewhere in the middle, living just enough for the city."

Damon Wise, Deadline

"Kapadia doesn't resort to polemic, nor does she try to force the narrative into tragedy or farce. In her clear, lyrical way, she simply tells the bittersweet stories of three friends who want nothing more than to be allowed to carry on as they are. All We Imagine as Light is specific in its detailing of life as a woman in today's Mumbai, but this Indian-French co-production also has the feel of an American or European indie comedy drama. It is universal and emotional enough to hypnotise anyone who has been alone in a city, or been spellbound by a film on the subject."

Nicholas Barber, BBC

"That Kapadia is able to render such a richly varied emotional texture from an aesthetic palette this constrained and contemplative isn’t merely a testament to her skill as a filmmaker; it’s an emblem of the process that powers the core of All We Imagine as Light. This is fundamentally a film about Mumbai. Kapadia evokes her adopted home with as much vivid clarity and bracing honesty as Jia Zhang-ke does Shanxi, or Elena Ferrante does Naples, because she has taken its animating principle—the reconciliation of opposites—as her own.

Ryan Coleman, Slant Magazine

"This casual everyday vignette is brimming with a sensuality (the rain, the clothes, the food, the women) that people don’t tend to notice when caught up in the rhythm of life. It takes a snapshot from a photographer removed from the situation to make you realize how full these moments are. Each shot by Ranabir Das in this gorgeous and absorbing film has been composed to have the skin-prickling effect of a photograph taken by someone with a deep and attentive care for their subject — a photographer sufficiently removed to see clearly while still close enough to feel the thrum of a lifeforce."

Sophie Monks Kaufman, IndieWire