Director: Payal Kapadia
Two nurses share a cramped Mumbai apartment, a demanding hospital schedule, and very different unresolved longings — All We Imagine as Light follows both of them toward a quieter coastal town where those longings finally have room to breathe.
What is All We Imagine as Light about?
Prabha, an older nurse, has spent years in a marriage that exists mostly on paper; her husband left for work abroad and rarely writes, so when a rice cooker arrives unannounced as a gift from him, it unsettles her more than any letter could. Her younger roommate Anu, meanwhile, is quietly seeing a Muslim man in a city that offers the couple almost no privacy, and she spends much of her energy simply trying to find somewhere the two of them can be alone together. The film moves at the unhurried pace of Mumbai itself — night shifts, crowded trains, small kindnesses between coworkers — before relocating to a beach town where a third woman, an older colleague facing her own housing troubles, joins them. Away from the city's noise, all three women get something Mumbai never gave them: space, privacy, and time to sit with what they actually want.
Cast & crew
Kani Kusruti plays Prabha with a careful, closed-off restraint that slowly cracks over the course of the film, while Divya Prabha gives Anu a more restless, searching energy. Chhaya Kadam rounds out the trio as the older colleague whose own quiet crisis becomes part of the story's emotional center once the setting shifts to the coast.
Context & significance
Directed by Payal Kapadia, the 2024 drama is an international co-production spanning France, India, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, and it won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival that year. Kapadia, previously known for documentary work, brings an observational, patient camera style to a story about women's inner lives that mainstream Indian cinema rarely takes this seriously.
Where & how to watch
All We Imagine as Light is available on K-Time with Persian dubbing and Persian subtitles, making its dialogue-driven, character-focused storytelling easy to follow for Farsi speakers. Anyone can browse the film's page for free, and watching it only requires a quick, free K-Time account login on a platform built around the Iranian diaspora's viewing habits.