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Filmmaker Payal Kapadia says it is an immense honour that her film All We Imagine As Light is part of the Competition section of the 2024 Cannes Film Festival.
It is the first Indian film in 30 years – and the first by an Indian female director – to be screened under the main segment of the prestigious film gala, reported the Press Trust of India.
The last Indian film to vie for the top prize in Cannes was Swaham (My Own), directed by Malayalam filmmaker Shaji N Karun in 1994.
Previously, the section was frequented for decades by Indian masters like Satyajit Ray and Mrinal Sen.
When Swaham was selected to the Cannes competition, sitting along with Karun on the high table of world cinema 30 years ago were cinema legends such as Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski (Three Colours: Red), Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami (Through the Olive Trees) and Chinese director Zhang Yimou (To Live).
A newcomer from the US called Quentin Tarantino walked away with the Palme d’Or that year for his cult film, Pulp Fiction.
At this year’s Cannes festival, to be held from May 14 to 25, Kapadia will be joined in the Palme d’Or race by cinematic heavyweights like American director Francis Ford Coppola, Canadian director David Cronenberg, Chinese director Jia Zhangke, French director Jacques Audiard, Italian director Paolo Sorrentino and another American legend, Paul Schrader.
Coppola and Audiard are former winners of the Cannes top prize.
“Being selected at Cannes is truly thrilling and humbling, especially considering how much I admire many directors selected in this section,” Kapadia said.
All We Imagine As Light, also written by Kapadia, marks her narrative feature debut. The Malayalam-Hindi feature will be screened alongside 19 other titles, including Coppola’s Megalopolis and Yorgos Lanthimos’ Kinds of Kindness.
Oh Canada by Paul Schrader, Bird by Andrea Arnold, The Shrouds by David Cronenberg and Anora by Sean Baker are also part of the main competition slate.
Kapadia, an alumna of the Film & Television Institute of India (FTII), is best known for her acclaimed documentary A Night Of Knowing Nothing, which premiered at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival’s Director’s Fortnight side-bar where it won the Oeil d’or (Golden Eye) award.
She is no stranger to Cannes. In 2017, her short film Afternoon Clouds became the FTII’s first student film selected by Cannes for its film school competition, now called La Cinef.
The point of departure for All We Imagine As Light, the story of two nurses from Kerala working at a Mumbai hospital, was the director’s experience of living with her nonagenarian grandmother who required a nurse day and night for care, the subject of Afternoon Clouds.
Two Malayalam actresses – Kani Kusruti and Divya Prabha – play the lead roles.
All We Imagine As Light portrays the sensitive gender and cultural politics in the country via the story of the two nurses – Prabha (Kani) and Anu (Divya). When Prabha receives an unexpected gift from her estranged husband, it throws her life into disarray.
No Indian film has won the Palme d’Or, including Ray’s Pather Panchali in 1956, a miss still rued by the cinema world as a momentous error. Pather Panchali was instead bestowed the Best Human Document award in Cannes.
“Indian cinema should take Payal Kapadia’s lead in the future,” said Karun, who sees the young Mumbai-based director imbibing a higher standard of cinematic philosophy that gives her works a rare sense of aesthetics and visual language.
“Payal’s gender interpretations in her works allow them to stand out in Indian cinema,” said Karun, who won a Camera d’Or Mention in Cannes for his debut film, Piravi, in 1989.
The official selection to the competition section and other categories this year includes Indian director Sandhya Suri’s debut feature film Santosh.
“Indian cinema should take Payal Kapadia’s lead in the future.”
