ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT*****

I am very late to watching ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT but I can confirm that all of the good things you heard are true.  Payal Kapadia's second feature is a beautifully observed, delicate, emotionally impactful story of three women who comfort and support each other in contemporary Mumbai.  They embody Durkheim's industrial ennui, unnoticed and under appreciated cogs in a brutal wheel of commerce and onward development.  This shows on their faces, darker-skinned than Bollywood heroines. In a funny and cathartic scenes they deface a billboard showing a shining vision of India's middle class dream - light-skinned and affluent.  Despite being professional women, this comfortable picture of a conventional family unit is something denied to them. Especially to Chhaya Kadam's Party who is desperate to save her home from developers when she has basically no property rights. 

But it is Kani Kusruti who anchors the film with her role as Prabha, an earnest small-town girl desperately lonely in arranged marriage with absentee husband.  Prabha's narrative arc will see her work through those frustrations and emotions with a touch of magic realism. It's no surprise that this happens when she is away from the City and grounded in village life.

Prabha is shocked at her friend Anu (Divua Prabha) an affair, but Anu's sex positivity is a breathe of fresh air in contrast with Prabha, as well as her ability not to over-complicate having an affair across religious lines in Modi's India. It's also a breath of fresh air to see a woman being pleasured in any kind of cinema let alone Indian cinema.

ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT has a running time of 118 minutes. It played Cannes, Toronto, Telluride and London 2024. It is available to stream.