All We Imagine as Light

All We Imagine as Light follows Prabha, a nurse in a busy Mumbai hospital, whose daily life is unsettled when a gift arrives from the husband she has not seen in years. She shares a cramped flat with Anu, a younger nurse caught between her family's expectations and her feelings for a man they would not accept. Unable to find privacy in the city, the two women join a colleague on a trip to a coastal town, where there is finally room for their private longings to surface.

The film is written and directed by Payal Kapadia, her first fiction feature after her earlier documentary work. Kani Kusruti plays Prabha and Divya Prabha plays Anu, with Chhaya Kadam, Hridhu Haroon, Azees Nedumangad and Tintumol Joseph in supporting roles. It was produced by Zico Maitra, Thomas Hakim and Ranabir Das, and is a co-production involving India, France, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Italy and the Netherlands Antilles.

Released in September 2024, the film took in about 3 million dollars worldwide, a solid figure for an art-house title. On IMDb it holds 7.1 from roughly 14,000 votes, while on TMDB it has 6.8 from far fewer votes. A critics' rating of 8.6 from 158 reviews places it well above those audience scores, suggesting that reviewers responded to it more strongly than general viewers did.