The first narrative film from Indian director Payal Kapadia, “All We Imagine as Light” is a spellbinding story of two nurses who share an apartment in Mumbai and a sisterhood forged amidst their respective romantic struggles. The women’s lives are characterized through their interactions with coworkers and patients, and Kapadia punctuates their shifts with sequences of documentary-like testimonials from anonymous residents of the city. The film paints a broad, yet vivid portrait of the loneliness and cultural, economical and political constraints that come with being an immigrant worker in Mumbai. The dual protagonists and their fleeting moments of love and longing, exquisitely realized through soft, glowing lights and accentuated with a jazz piano score, are what fill in the core of the film. But it’s the metaphysical direction it delves deeper into as the women venture further away from the city that makes it truly rapturous and transcendent. “All We Imagine as Light” is a one of a kind, fully formed masterpiece, and a strong contender for the greatest film of the year.
*This film screened at the 60th Chicago International Film Festival
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