Payal Kapadia's 'All We Imagine As Light' First Indian Film In 40 Years To Compete For Palme d'Or At Cannes

Payal Kapadia's debut fiction feature film 'All We Imagine As Light' is in the race for top prize at Cannes 2024. The film festival will take place from May 14 to May 25 at the French Riviera.

Payal Kapadia's debut fiction feature film 'All We Imagine As Light' is in the race for top prize at Cannes 2024

Source : X/@FilmUpdates

New Delhi: Payal Kapadia's debut fiction feature film 'All We Imagine As Light' is in the race for top prize at Cannes 2024. The film festival will take place from May 14 to May 25 at the French Riviera. 'All We Imagine As Light' is also the first Indian film to compete for Palme d'Or award after nearly four decades.

Payal Kapadia's 'All We Imagine As Light'

Kapadia's film will be competing alongside the biggest names in the filmmaking industry. At the 77th Cannes Film Festival, 'All We Imagine As Light' will compete with Yórgos Lánthimos’s Kinds Of Kindness, Magnus Von Horn’s The Girl With The Needle, Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis,Sean Baker’s Anora, and Paolo Sorrentino’s Parthenope .

'Barbie' director Grea Gerwig will be presiding over the jury for the top honours category.

‘Santosh’, a film by British-Indian director Sandhya Suri, has been chosen for the festival's Un Certain Regard section. 

 

Explore the dark heart of India with Sandhya Suri’s sophomore feature SANTOSH, in Official Selection at UN CERTAIN REGARD.#Santosh #SandhyaSuri @shahanagoswami @sunita_rajwar #GoodChaos @hautetcourt #LionfishFilms @BFI @Festival_Cannes #Cannes2024 #UnCertainRegard pic.twitter.com/UClJuS7rtW

— mk2 films (@FilmsMk2) April 11, 2024

On May 14, Quentin Dupieux's The Second Act will kick off the festival.

Payal Kapadia filmography

Meanwhile, Payal Kapadia is not new to Cannes. Her documentary 'A Night of Knowing Nothing', won the  Golden Eye for best documentary during the 2021 edition of Cannes Film Festival. The film, which debuted in the Director's Fortnight section, uses letters from a student to her lover—which blend reality and a dreamlike state—to talk about the turbulence on campus.

The shorts ‘Afternoon Clouds’ (2017), which was also chosen for Cannes, and ‘And What Is the Summer Saying?’ (2018) are two of Kapadia's other well-known works.

About All We Imagine As Light

Payal’s current Cannes competition film ‘All We Imagine As Light’ is an Indo-French production that tells the tale of Prabha, a nurse, who received a surprise gift from her long-estranged husband. Her life is disrupted by this. 

Meanwhile, Anu, her younger flatmate, searches for a quiet place in the city where she may spend time alone with her boyfriend, but to no avail. During a road journey to a coastal resort, the two nursesfo through a magical forest where their fantasies can come true.

Other Indian films selected for Cannes competition

In addition to ‘Kharij’, a few Indian films that have been chosen for the Cannes competition section include ‘Neecha Nagar’ (1946) by Chetan Anand; ‘Amar Bhoopali’ (1952) by V Shantaram; ‘Awaara’ (1953) by Raj Kapoor; ‘Parash Pathar’ (1958) by Satyajit Ray; and ‘Garm Hava’ (1974) by MS Sathyu.