All We Imagine as Light / Prabhayay ninachathellam

 

Payal Kapadia: All We Imagine As Light / പ്രഭയായ് നിനച്ചതെല്ലാം (FR/IN/IT/LU/NL 2024). Kani Kasruti (Prabha) and Chhaya Kadam (Parvaty).

Data mostly from Wikipedia:

    Titre original : All We Imagine as Light

പ്രഭയായ് നിനച്ചതെല്ലാം

Prabhayay ninachathellam (Malayalam)

    FR/IN/IT/LU/NL 2024. PC: Petit Chaos (France), en coproduction avec Chalk and Cheese (Inde), Another Birth (Inde), Arte France Cinéma (France), Baldr Film (Pays-Bas), Les Films Fauves (Luxembourg) et Pulpa Film (Italie). P: Julien Graff et Thomas Hakim. EX: Harshit Agrawal. Co-P: Gilles Chanial, Ranabir Das, Frank Hoeve, Zico Maitra, Roberto Minervini, Olivier Père et Denise Ping Lee.

    Réalisation et scénario : Payal Kapadia

Photographie : Ranabir Das - couleur — 1,66:1

Décors : Piyusha Chalke, Shamim Khan et Yashasvi Sabharwal

Costumes : Maxima Basu (en)

Musique : Topshe (Dhritiman Das)

Son : Romain Ozanne, Benjamin Silvestre et Olivier Voisin — Dolby Digital

Montage : Clément Pinteaux

    Distribution

Kani Kusruti : Prabha

Divya Prabha : Anu

Chhaya Kadam : Parvaty

Hridhu Haroon : Shiaz, le petit ami d'Anu

Azees Nedumangad : Dr Manoj

Anand Sami : l'homme noyé

    Durée : 115 minutes

    Langues originales : malayalam et hindi

    Genre : drame, romance

    Sociétés de distribution : Condor Distribution (France) ; September Film (Pays-Bas)

    Dates de sortie :

Festival premiere: 23 May 2024 Cannes

US festival premiere: 31 Aug 2024 Telluride

Indian festival premiere: Oct 2024 Mumbai

French premiere: 2 Oct 2024 (sortie nationale) - sous-titres francais: William Martin

Finnish premiere: 7 March 2025

    Vu lundi, le 3 mars 2025, L’Archipel, 17 bd de Strasbourg, 75010 Paris, 10e, M° Strasbourg–Saint-Denis, Lignes 4, 8, 9

Telluride Film Festival 2024: "Made possible by a donation from Jennifer Wilson. Larry Gross: "Prabha (Kani Kusruti) is a nurse locked in an arranged marriage to a man working overseas whom she barely knows. Anu (Divya Prabha) is her vivacious young roommate having an awkward affair with a Muslim young man. Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam), their older co-worker, is about to be evicted by a greedy developer. Writer-director Payal Kapadia, a former political activist and award-winning nonfiction filmmaker, has crafted a first fiction film of remarkable delicacy and power. She and her cinematographer Ranabir Das make the heat, rain and street crowds of Mumbai so vividly palpable, that you feel it on your skin. Kapadia’s heroines face heartbreaking moral and spiritual battles as soon as they walk out of their homes each day; she captures their quiet, gentle dignity with deep wisdom and a visionary camera. The first Indian film in competition at Cannes in 30 years, ALL WE IMAGINE won the Grand Jury Prize." –LG (France-India-Netherlands-Luxembourg, 2024, 118m) In person: Payal Kapadia

AA: Payal Kapadia's All We Imagine As Light starts as a formidable city symphony of Mumbai, the world's fifth largest city with a population of 12 million. The soundscape is as stunning as the visual experience. Even in intimate circumstances the sound of the huge city is all-present.

This is a story of a circle of nurses struggling in various challenging situations. The actors are superb. An elegiac mode dominates especially in the story of Prabha (Kani Kusruti), trapped in an arranged marriage in which the husband is always away in Germany. The film is distinguished by a forceful sense of life. A genuine sensuality is omnipresent. The nurses are also union activists, fighting for their rights in a man's world. This is a realistic film, often with a documentary drive. The narrative is linear but not smooth. It proceeds in leaps and bounds, with frequent ellipses.

The film looks like it has been shot in available light, which means that there is a lot of darkness and faces hidden in the shadows. In the final part of the movie Prabha breaks from her life in Mumbai and moves back to her home village in Ratnagiri by the sea, escorted by her friends. There are uncanny experiences in the jungle and in a cave with ancient wall sculptures and a life-saving operation where Prabha rescues a drowning man with CPR. For a moment, in mental confusion, Prabha and the man imagine him as her absentee husband. In the Ratnagiri sequence, Payal Kapadia explores dimensions of magical realism.

The moment that gives the film its title is a mesmerizing get-together of the women at night in a beach shack. In the middle of the darkness the lights of the shack illuminate the world.