Have you ever watched a movie and been so enveloped by its world that you wanted to live in it?
Indian filmmaker Payal Kapadia remembers seeing Wong Kar-wai’s “Chungking Express” as a teenager and adoring its dreamlike vibe of romantic longing so much that she wanted to hop on the next flight to Hong Kong so she could get lost wandering through the city’s neon-lit streets.
“I was really into that movie,” Kapadia says. Years later, when she finally made it to the city, she went straight to Hong Kong Mansions, the sprawling shopping and restaurant complex prominently featured in Wong’s film.
And, of course, it underwhelmed.
“Because how could it not?” Kapadia says, laughing. “It’s all Wong Kar-wai. But it did make me think about subjectivity and all the feelings that can be infused into a movie’s setting to make it so much more delightful.”
Kapadia took that lesson and what she learned at the Film & Television Institute of India, along with the expertise gained making two shorts and her award-winning 2021 documentary “A Night of Knowing Nothing,” and funneled it into her striking feature film debut, “All We Imagine as Light,” which opens Friday at the Laemmle Royal.
The movie does for Mumbai what Wong did for Hong Kong, conjuring the precarious chaos of the city by day and the haunting stillness of its rain-soaked streets at night. It’s centered on the friendship between three women: two roommate nurses, the serious Prabha (Kani Kusruti) and the youthful Anu (Divya Prabha), and Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam), a widow and activist, recently forced out of her home by property developers.
Kani Kusruti, left, and Divya Prabha in the movie “All We Imagine as Light.”
(Petit Chaos)
There are men, too, but it’s complicated. Prabha’s husband, from an arranged marriage, works in Germany and his return is uncertain; Anu has a devoted boyfriend Shiaz (Hridhu Haroon), but because he’s Muslim and she is Hindu, they must keep their love secret due to societal constraints.
Depicting the uncertainty of their lives with a truthful tenderness, “All We Imagine as Light” makes the personal political. It was the first Indian feature invited to compete at Cannes in nearly three decades and went on to win the festival’s Grand Prix prize when it premiered in May. A gorgeous, generous portrait of a city and its people, it more than earns the accolade. You may want to book a ticket to Mumbai after seeing it.
It’s a warm October Sunday, and Kapadia just arrived in Los Angeles from San Francisco. We’re sitting on the patio of a Beverly Hills hotel restaurant, trying to stay out of the sun. The waiter just offered us bottomless mimosas.
“That sounds like a very L.A. thing,” Kapadia says, smiling. She politely passes as she’s participating in a couple of events for her film later in the day. Kapadia does accept the caviar resting on a tiny pancake. “One doesn’t say no to caviar,” she says, adding that it’s her first time trying it.
“What is this life that I’m eating caviar?” She nibbles at it. A child at the next table watches with curiosity. “It’s salty. But it’s really not that nice.” We agree though that the little pancake was delicious.
“My family was always supportive,” Kapadia says, “which is why, as a woman, I could be a filmmaker. There would be so many people in my country who would think, ‘Why is the daughter pursuing higher education in the first place?’”
(JSquared Photography)
“I’m amazed at this country,” Kapadia, 38, says. “It’s baffling, but interesting. Just the whole of it and the general happiness. But I’ve been going to very liberal cities in America, so I get the sense that this is a great country where people are really expressing themselves. ‘Wow, America is so accepting.’ But it’s the same in India. You can have many different Indias, just as, I suppose, you can have many different Americas.”
Kapadia’s mother, Nalini Malani, is an accomplished video artist, and she remembers watching her mom construct films, getting excited as she explained the reason behind each cut, feeling, as a kid, that she knew a secret no one else understood. In high school, Kapadia discovered a film club, started by her chemistry teacher, that screened movies by Werner Herzog, Andrei Tarkovsky and Satyajit Ray. By the time she went to university, Kapadia was a regular at experimental, documentary and world cinema festivals in Mumbai.
“My family was always supportive,” she says, “which is why, as a woman, I could be a filmmaker. There would be so many people in my country who would think, ‘Why is the daughter pursuing higher education in the first place?’ Or they would only have enough money to pay for the son to go to college. I am very privileged. To make films is very difficult.”
India’s Film & Television Institute accepts only 10 people for each of its disciplines per year, making it challenging to win a spot at the publicly funded school. Kapadia was accepted on her second try and, after graduating in 2018, secured a residency to begin writing what became “All We Imagine as Light.” Simultaneously, she completed “A Night of Knowing Nothing,” a dreamlike document of students protesting the Hindu nationalist rule of Indian prime minister Narendra Modi.
Kapadia sees “All We Imagine as Light” as a political statement, too, though it avoids being didactic. Early in the film, you hear someone saying they’ve lived in Mumbai for 23 years and they’re still afraid to call it home.
“Mumbai is a perilous city — even its geography is in a state of flux,” Kapadia. says. “Historically, it was just seven islands that was bridged by the British East India Company to make it a port because they lost their port in Surat. So the whole premise of the city comes from a super-capitalistic, colonialist past. And the city remains in a state of flux. Developers are grabbing areas where people have lived for years. Women move there to feel more liberated, but there’s an impermanence as well.”
The feeling of insecurity that courses through the movie extends to Anu’s relationship with Shiaz, as she ponders a difficult future due to their different religions. Kapadia includes a tender love scene between the two, a moment she sees as “everything in support of romance and this girl’s desires — and also freedom.”
Kapadia finished shooting “All We Imagine as Light” in November. Then, because of the film’s French funding, she set up in Paris to begin post-production with a French crew. They were still in the thick of it when Cannes selected the movie for competition. She spent the month before the festival working 18-hour days in her pajamas, chain-smoking cigarettes.
“It was intense,” Ranabir Das, the movie’s cinematographer, says over the phone. “After a point, we lost perspective because of the long days, so we were not 100% sure if the film was finished or if the edit was right. It became difficult because we were working on instinct itself.”
Kapadia offers a blunter assessment. “When we turned it in, I was like, ‘I don’t know what it is. I don’t know what I’ve done.’” She laughs, remembering her terror.
A week later, the movie screened at Cannes, with Kapadia, the actors and crew in the theater. She watched the whole time, she says, with one eye shut. When it ended, the audience stood and applauded — and kept applauding. Someone in the theater captured Kapadia smiling, shyly at first and then exploding in relief. Afterward, everyone headed over to a nearby bar where they danced, celebrated and ate kabobs. Kapadia’s mother was there, too, sharing in her daughter’s joy.
What did she think?
“She told me she needed to watch it again,” Kapadia says. “Then she went again the next day. She liked it a lot. I discussed this film, all the layers and contexts, with her over many, many years. She was happy that, regardless of all the ups and downs, that it finally came together.”
“All We Imagine as Light” was shortlisted by France for its entry to the Oscars’ international feature category, but the selection committee chose Jacques Audiard’s “Emilia Pérez” to represent the country instead. And India selected the crowd-pleasing “Laapataa Ladies” as its entry, sidelining Kapadia’s movie — at least in the international category. But that doesn’t mean its Oscar chances are over. Just last year, “Anatomy of a Fall” earned nominations for picture and original screenplay after being passed over by France.
When we spoke, Kapadia wasn’t thinking about any of that, focusing on her movie’s upcoming premiere at the MAMI Mumbai Film Festival and writing her next project, which will again touch on the precarious nature of life in the city she so beautifully captured in “All We Imagine as Light.” She has a strand or two in mind and is looking forward to settling down soon and focusing.
At the moment, though, it’s hard to concentrate on anything other than the giant golden butterfly fluttering around our table.
“Yeah, it’s hard to ignore it,” Kapadia says. “Even the butterflies are bigger here.”
The waiter brings the check. A dog at the next table barks insistently, irate that its owner has abandoned it for the brunch spread.
“This is all lovely,” Kapadia says. But she’s ready to go back to work. “It’s what I live for. Those years making this movie were stressful, but it also made me want to work more. It’s what I’m happiest doing.”