Title: All We Imagine as Light

Director: Payal Kapadia

Year: 2024

Country and language: India, Malayalam / Hindi / Marathi

Genre: Drama

Australian distributor: Roadshow

In India, Hindu nurses Prabha and Anu live together. Reserved and conservative, Prabha is in an arranged marriage to a man who she has met only once - when he visited from Germany. Anu is more outgoing, and has a secret - Muslim - boyfriend. A third colleague, Parvarthy, is facing imminent homelessness. This is a moving and intimate portrayal of womanhood and friendship in India.

From Virat Nehru’s review: Women remain invisible in India, because their personhood continues to be filtered through a patriarchal mindset which fails to acknowledge them as individuals who are free to choose what they desire. They must fiercely contest for space in a society preoccupied with socially and morally policing their right to self-determination. Kapadia traces the lives of three female nurses … who must define what intimacy means for them in a city that dims any possibility of genuine connection. This journey of self-discovery for our three protagonists, though initially unassuming, takes on a more subversive meaning as the film moves forward; Kapadia wants us to pay attention to the lives of those that contemporary India has conveniently forgotten. 

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