If films were representative of human experience, we’d get a few thousand movies every year about the people of Mumbai, Lilongwe, Salvador, Managua, Memphis, etc. trying to keep their heads above the bullshit. I refer to representation not in regard to the quantity of human lives, but rather to their quality, their emotional depth, their importance in the grand design. All We Imagine as Light is about a nurse who hasn’t heard from her migrant husband in over a year; her young housemate, who falls in love with a boy she can’t have; and their friend, who loses her home to real estate developers (“If you don’t have papers, it’s like you don’t exist”). Things that happen countless times every day across the planet, in other words. All We Imagine as Light is a meditation on tolerance, survival by way of seeing past the force of social judgments and finding beauty in the willing other, and in the process finding a quantum of beauty in oneself. The jury of the Film Federation of India—Modi’s India—submitted a far inferior film for Academy Award consideration. That’s perhaps a greater honor to Payal Kapadia and everyone associated with this film than an Oscar would have been. The aforementioned bullshit doesn’t require something as lofty as love for a solution, although that would be nice. Tolerance, a world bathed in soft blue, would be enough. 9
All We Imagine as Light, directed by Payal Kapadia, peformances by Kani Kusruti and Prabha Chhaya, Condor Distribution, 2024. Reviewed August 18, 2025.