Focus Expat Cinema: every Wednesday around 7PM foreign language films with English subtitles.

When three nurses each face their own personal crossroads, the city of Mumbai bears witness to moments of compassion and friction between them as they strive to carve out a space of their own. A poetic exploration and Cannes 2024 Grand Prix winner.

Set against the vivid evening downpours of Mumbai, All We Imagine as Light depicts the slow becoming of friendship and tenderness between three nurses as they navigate loss, longing and material hardships in the increasingly gentrified metropolis. The upstanding Prabha is distraught after receiving a gift from her long-absent husband in an arranged marriage. Meanwhile, her happy-go-lucky flatmate Anu wanders through the city’s liminal space just to be together with her star-crossed lover from a different faith. The older Parvaty, who is facing an eviction by a real estate company, later brings them along on a trip to her coastal village where the humdrum of the city melts away, letting unrealised dreams and fear come to surface.

Drawing from Kapadia’s experience with nonfiction materials, here she demonstrates a documentary sensibility that captures the restless Mumbai in a contemporary city symphony, weaving together scenes of night markets, crowded commuter trains, glows of apartment windows and spoken narratives to ground her intimate stories towards reality. At its heart, All We Imagine as Light is about carving a space for hope and compassion in a world that steals one’s lives by the seconds.