‘All We Imagine as Light’: First Indian Film in 30 Years to Compete at Cannes

At the forthcoming Cannes Film Festival, which will take place from May 14 to 25, Payal Kapadia’s first fiction feature, “All We Imagine As Light,” will vie for the top prize. With Shaji N Karun’s “Swaham” in 1994 being the most recent Indian film to contend for the Palme d’Or, this is the first in almost thirty years.

In competition with acclaimed filmmakers like Paolo Sorrentino, Paul Schrader, Yorgos Lanthimos, Sean Baker, Francis Ford Coppola, and Magnus Von Horn will be Kapadia’s film. Greta Gerwig, the director of “Ladybird” and “Barbie,” will chair the jury.

Additionally, Anurag Kashyap wrote, “After 30 years, an Indian film in main competition (sic).”

An additional selection for the festival’s Un Certain Regard section is “Santosh,” a film by British-Indian filmmaker Sandhya Suri. On May 14, Quentin Dupieux’s “The Second Act” will kick off the celebration.

At Cannes, Kapadia is a respected figure. She won the Golden Eye for best documentary in the 2021 edition with her film “A Night of Knowing Nothing.”

An Indo-French play called “All We Imagine As Light” narrates the tale of Prabha, a nurse, who is unsettled by an unexpected gift from her husband, who has left her.

Additional Indian films by Chetan Anand, V Shantaram, Raj Kapoor, Satyajit Ray, MS Sathyu, Mrinal Sen, and Satyajit Ray have also been previously selected for the Cannes competition section. “Neecha Nagar” continues to be the only Indian movie to have taken home a Palme d’Or.