77th edition of the Cannes International Film Festival. The Grand Jury Prize awarded to the film All We Imagine as Light

The Feature Film Jury of the 77th Cannes International Film Festival chaired by Greta Gerwig and composed of Lily Gladstone, Omar Sy, Ebru Ceylan, Juan Antonio Bayona, Eva Green, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Nadine Labaki and Pierfrancesco Favino awarded the Grand Prize to All We Imagine as Light, a Franco-Indo-Italian-Luxembourgish-Dutch film, directed by Payal KAPADIA, a young 38-year-old Indian director based in Bombay, whose first feature-length fiction film this is, and which will be released in 2024.

The first Indian film to be programmed in the official selection in thirty years and to compete for the Palme d’Or, it had already won an award for its screenplay as part of the Gan Foundation’s 2022 Creation Prize.
All We Imagine as Light, ”Everything we imagine as light”!

A magnificent title that immediately takes us to a dreamlike world, the prerogative of cinema since the Lumière Brothers.

But, from the first images of the film, we are brutally plunged into harsh reality.

A long tracking shot in the early morning over the populous and teeming city of Bombay, the delivery men, the market stalls, the congested streets, the vehicles making their way through this sprawling city that absorbs, like an insatiable monster, the poor people from the countryside.

Then, the characters enter the scene, three women who work in the same hospital.
Prabha (Kani Kusruti) and Anu (Divya Prabha) are nurses and share a small apartment.
One, married to a stranger who has gone to work in Germany and from whom she has no news, is tormented. The other, younger and cheerful, secretly in love with a Muslim, is frustrated at having no place to make love with him. A third, Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam), is under threat of eviction by developers …

Payal KAPADIA paints a delicate and sensitive portrait of these three women, their loves hindered in a repressive society – the weight of traditions, the caste system, religion – their solitude, their difficulties in finding happiness. To escape from the dark daily life to go towards the light!

A film imbued with a strong emotion that evokes the courageous fight of these women, their solidarity, their resilience and their openness to others.
A film a thousand miles from Bollywood, the powerful Indian film industry that leaves no room for young independent filmmakers, even less for women.
The crowning glory of a moving film, the revelation of a great filmmaker from the Indian continent.

The film is expected in theaters next October.
It will first tour festivals around the world.

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