Payal Kapadia sowed the first seeds of her globally-acclaimed film, All We Imagine As Light, while participating at the International Short and Documentary Film Festival of Kerala (IDSFFK) in Thiruvananthapuram in 2015 with her short film, The Last Mango Before the Monsoon. Travelling a long journey, with stints of various development stages at festivals like Rotterdam and Cannes, Kapadia’s project would go on to win the Grand Prix in Cannes and two Golden Globe nominations for Best Director and Best Motion Picture – Non-English Language. (Also read: Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine as Light tops Barack Obama’s favourite films of 2024. See full list)
A decade later, the Mumbai-born Kapadia, a Film and Television Institute of India, Pune alumna, returned to Thiruvananthapuram this week to receive the Spirit of Cinema Award at the International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK) on December 20. All We Imagine As Light, which features Malayalam actors Kani Kusruti, Divya Prabha, Hridhu Haroon and Azees Nedumangad and several crew members from Kerala along with Marathi actor Chhaya Khadam and others, witnessed many acting workshops and script revisions in the state to reflect the reality of roles and languages.
Kapadia, who heads to Los Angeles from Thiruvananthapuram for the Golden Globes Awards ceremony in the Beverly Hills on January 5 and promotion of her film for the Academy Awards nominations, talks to Hindustan Times at the conclusion of the IFFK (December 13-20) about the response to the film following the theatrical release in India last month, her own artistic response to the country’s socio-economic and political changes through the film, and the forthcoming awards season in the United States. Excerpts from an interview:
All We Imagine As Light had been a long project that evolved with time and changes in India in the past decade. As it draws crowds in the country and abroad, how do you view the audience response in terms of your own artistic response to the socio-economic and political situation in the country today?
It has been a good response largely. In every country, the response has been different. In India, the main thing is that we have been able to screen films in as many cinemas as possible because it is very difficult to get distribution for independent movies in India. Our main aim was, even if we had only one or two cinemas, in each big city, people could come and watch. I think we had a pretty decent response. We had the first release in Kochi, Kerala, and we got an almost hopeful response. In Chennai, too, it was good, also in Delhi and Kolkata. The Chennai audience is a killer audience (laughs). Mostly, we had trouble in smaller cities because we didn’t have money for marketing. Many people didn’t even know that it was in their city. Now, we are trying to have a focused distribution, for example, in Guwahati. We received a lot of calls from Guwahati saying, please release it there. We will release it only on the weekend, and, like a quorum, people can sign up for the screening on the internet. We are trying our best. The people want to watch a film about what is happening in the country.
There has been strong protests against the One Nation, One Election Bill just introduced in Parliament. Your film talks about the multitudinous of India by making Mumbai as the set of a story of two nurses from Kerala reflecting the Indian reality of the rich and poor Hindu and Muslim, the learned and the illiterate.
It is obvious from our film that it is the diversity we want to be maintained in our country. The One Nation One election will not allow that. For a federal system to continue the way it is, we must have the elections as we have been having them. We believe in a representational democracy. It is obvious from the film what our stance is. Multiple identities can exist together peacefully. Unfortunately, the world benefits from dividing people. As artists, we all feel diversity is beneficial for better and organic thoughts and ideas. That is democracy and discourse. If everybody was thinking along the same lines, democracy would be null and void.
As a filmmaker from Mumbai, how has the politics of identity shaped your art and philosophy?
What was the premise of the city of Bombay? The city was not there. It was a bunch of islands where a few people were residing. Then the colonial British rulers said, They are throwing us out of Surat, so we have to do something over here. So they made a new port. They called people from all over the country to come and work here. The entire premise of the city is that people have come from all over the country, all over Maharashtra, and from all over outside Maharashtra. That is the premise of the city. Then how can we say that it is made up of only one kind of people, one kind of language. It is not. The city was made by the hands of millions of people from all over our country. What is wrong with that? That is a great thing. We have to respect that also. While people of many religions live in Mumbai, there are also many castes and classes. That is the reality. Many people have also made films about that reality. (Also read: Payal Kapadia reacts as All We Imagine As Light named best 2024 film by Sight and Sound magazine)
How important was it for you to view your film in Malayalam language becoming the first Indian film to vie for the Palme d’Or in Cannes in 30 years, considering the last one was also a Malayalam movie, Swaham by Shaji N Karun? Both you and Karun and alumni of the Film and Television Institute of India, Pune.
I think Cannes should really have more Indian films. There has been a gross neglect. We have made so many good films in the past three decades, and these films could easily have been on par. Other festivals are taking Indian films in the main competition, in Venice, Locarno… We had Mahesh Narayanan’s film, Ariyippu (Declaration), another Malayalam film in Locarno two years ago. The Disciple by Chaitanya Tamhane was screened in Venice in 2020. Films from states like Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Maharashtra are doing well at festivals. There are a lot of different interesting works happening in Indian cinema. There are some people taking risks in the narratives, in the forms. As soon as you start doing that you can have some reach outside as well.
The International Film Festival of Kerala honoured you with its Spirit of Cinema Award. How significant is the honour in terms of your works that question the system and its drawbacks?
To have our film screened at the International Film Festival of Kerala was an honour. All We Imagine As Light actually started with the IDSFFK in Thiruvananthapuram in 2015. In 2022, too, I was in Thiruvananthapuram, staying in the same hotel and attending the festival, but also doing some casting and pre-production over here. We started like that, and we are ending our journey here. This week witnessed the last day of the film’s release in Thiruvananthapuram. It is like a long journey starting in Thiruvananthapuram and ending in Thiruvananthapuram. We also had a great crowd coming to the film screening at the IFFK. Receiving the Spirit of Cinema Award was the cherry on top.
You are now heading to Los Angeles from Thiruvananthapuram for the Golden Globes Awards where you are nominated for Best Director, a first for an Indian director, along with Best Motion Picture – Non-English Language.
Everything is a new experience. We didn’t even know so many awards existed before. In Europe, yes we knew the many awards there. In America, it is new for us. The Golden Globes, of course, we have heard of. In America, we didn’t know there were several other awards. Every state has its own critics prize. We got many critics prizes in places like Boston and New York. We were first or second in all of these. It is interesting that in the United States people like All We Imagine As Light.
