All We Imagine as Light

In her first fiction feature, documentarian Payal Kapadia brings a poetic profundity to this 
cinematic spellbinder about female sisterhood in a big city (Mumbai) full of societal, economic and political pressures that can force out intimacy and dreams



This film plumbs the extraordinary emotions that hum and throb through ordinary life.

We’re well into the film when Kapadia delivers her biggest surprise, breaking one of conventional screenwriting’s cardinal rules by switching the setting and essentially dividing the film into two halves. What’s more, it works.

This is a film of moments that stay with you.

“All We Imagine as Light” is the kind of movie one experiences in solitude even when sharing it with others. As with dwellers in a great metropolis, it makes strangers and accomplices of us all.

Small in its movements and thoughtful in its observations, All We Imagine As Light is quietly resonant.

All We Imagine as Light is an intriguing story with solid performances and a conclusion that, although hopeful, doesn't seem quite enough. [Full review in Spanish]

The movie flows along like a dream with some lovely sequences in the city and in the country. There is a magical sequence in a cave, where graffiti is mingled with faces sculpted into the cave walls, lensed by Ranabir Das. It is an enchanting film.

[Payal Kapadia] is quite canny in the political aspect...and is able to explore it without ever detaching herself from the emotional state of her protagonists...[Full review in Spanish]

Mumbai, with its relentless energy and unwavering monsoons, becomes the beating heart of All We Imagine as Light, Payal Kapadia’s new film. [Full review in Spanish]