The voice of women in All We Imagine as Light

Review by In the Frame critic Hojeswinee Kanagarajah

As part of our In the Frame program, five emerging film critics had the opportunity to watch, reflect on and review films in the Perth Festival Lotterywest Films 2024 – 25 season.

In an industry dominated by male voices, nepotism and a thirst for commercial box office success, Payal Kapadia’s debut fiction film All We Imagine As Light (2024) cuts through the noise with its lyrical cinematography and quiet but powerful portrayal of the lives of working-class migrant women. Backdropped by a bluish Mumbai haze, the Hindi-Malayalam film explores the lives, hopes and dreams of three women – Prabha, Anu and Parvathy – and is filled with moonlit confessions and intimate shots that provoke the audience to reflect on the ways capitalism, classism and patriarchal values are woven into our everyday lives. 

Kapadia’s documentary background shines, creating a unique edge to the film through its montage sequences, usage of voiceovers and dynamic shots. The visuals, lighting and writing create a tender and intimate mood that is equal parts pensive and revering to viewers. The film shines a new light on Mumbai, challenging the migrant success myth and zooming into the migrant identities of working-class Indian women. 

The film touches on socio-cultural themes like gentrification, inter-racial relationships, sexism and cultural expectations. To those who regularly watch Indian films, these topics are not something new. The inclusion of these themes is not revolutionary for this reason; and the film does not address them explicitly nor in-depth. What the film excels in, however, is in its presentation of these themes. Kapadia artfully weaves them throughout the film, drawing out a picture of how these issues have continued to shape the lives of generations of women. We see this in Prabha, tied to an absent husband who she has heard nothing from in a year. Parvathy, kicked out of her Mumbai home of 22 years after her husband’s passing, has no documents in her name to fight off the eviction. Anu is forced to pursue love in secret, and goes to great lengths, even concealing her identity, to visit her love. 

The city is constructed as a character of its own, and through each woman we see a different side of it. For Anu, Mumbai is filled with pockets of romance. It is intimate conversations, lively streets after dark, finding solace in your lover’s presence among the crowd. For Prabha, Mumbai is quiet, vast. It is during Prabha’s scenes that the colour blue is most prominent. The trains look empty and cold, and the rain feels endless. Mumbai is a lonely place. For Parvathy, Mumbai is unforgiving. It is a place filled with privilege, and her apartment is dim, crowded and filled with decades of history with her late husband – none of which belong to her. Mumbai feels unfamiliar. 

Then we enter Ratnagiri, and suddenly there is light. The dense crowds and fluorescent lights of Mumbai dissipate, replaced instead by a vast coast, greenery and bright natural sunlight filtering between the trees. 

Backdropped by an intergenerational friendship between the three women, All We Imagine As Light puts focus solely on the female experience. The male gaze and male-centred screen industry don't have a place in this story. And this choice ruffled some feathers. Jahnu Barua, head of Film Federation India’s all-male panel that chose the nation’s official Oscars entry, remarked that Kapadia’s film was “very poor technically”.

“We felt that the films which have gone to the Oscars in the last few years lacked Indian-ness,” he said. 

Their lack of support could perhaps be associated with the film’s co-production through European funding, or perhaps due to Kapadia going against the grain and presenting perspectives often seen as taboo in our communities. 

But that doesn’t deter Kapadia. Instead, she is staunch in her advocacy for the government to support diverse independent filmmakers, while simultaneously openly challenging the west’s perception of Indian films. In interviews, she discusses India’s self-sustained cinema ecosystem that doesn’t prioritise largely western festivals like the Oscars, Golden Globes and Cannes as the end-all goal. 

The western world’s view of Indian cinema is sorely limited, often associating it with loud, rambunctious colour and grandiose theatrical musicals. But the Indian film landscape extends far beyond that. It is a rich scene filled with diverse stories and perspectives. That’s why seeing a multilingual South Indian movie like All We Imagine As Light, by an independent female director, on the big screen is so important, as it represents a shift in perspectives for viewers, opening a dialogue for non-South Asian audiences to consider the diverse range of Indian films available. 

“I think that the West needs to start looking more at Indian cinema and accepting that there are different ways. There are different ways of acting. There are different ways of performance. We come from a very theatrical, sometimes melodramatic background, and that is also a way. So I think that the diversity of Indian cinema is not restricted to Bollywood,” says Kapadia. 

What initially started off as a student project for Kapadia has since evolved into something much bigger. After winning the Grand Prix at Cannes, the first Indian woman to do so, Kapadia will now join the festival as a jury member. But she’s not done telling stories about Mumbai just yet; Kapadia is in the planning stage of developing two more films exploring the city. 

Towards the end of All We Imagine As Light, there is a scene in which the two young lovers are exploring an abandoned cave in the quaint coastal village in Ratnagiri. They run their fingers along the wall, tracing over faded proclamations carved by others before them. They stumble across a particular carving of a woman and it perplexes Anu. She can’t look away. 

“She looks like she’s been stuck here forever, waiting for something to happen,” she says. To which her lover responds, “she looks like you”. 

This minuscule exchange perfectly sums up the film’s central theme of love, longing and loneliness over a few seconds. The statement strikes the heart, encapsulating a fate many women subdued by the patriarchal system face. 

In the film, this scene signals a shift in the women’s lives. After that, we see Anu and Shiaz’s relationship grow as they find acceptance together, and Prabha freeing herself from her past through a captivating magical realist sequence that casts a dream-like glow to the film’s climax act. 

A sense of hope engulfs the final scene, and the women look out into the ocean with light glimmering in their eyes. Detached from the illusions of Mumbai and liberated from their past, there is a lightness that emanates from this mismatched group. Their problems are not resolved, but by the shore in each other’s company, there is a sense of togetherness and hope; and for one night, the characters will revel in that twinkling feeling.