All We Imagine as Light

In writer-director Payal Kapadia’s revelatory fiction feature debut, which won a historic Grand Prize at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, a mysterious rice cooker arrives from far away: a possible present from an estranged lover. Centering on two roommates who work together at a hospital in Mumbai—head nurse Prabha (Kusruti) and recent hire Anu (Prabha)—and their coworker, cook Parvaty (Kadam), All We Imagine as Light details with exquisite texture the travails of working-class womanhood in a bustling metropolis. In the city’s unforgiving churn and overwhelming crowds there is anonymity and independence, but also longing and loneliness. The rice cooker crystallizes these contradictions, as an appliance that allows women greater leisure and flexibility, but traps them within the age-old expectations of being providers. As Kapadia said in an interview with the British Film Institute, “The rice cooker [helps a woman] be a better mother, better wife. That’s what capitalism feeds on—your insecurities.”