‘All We Imagine as Light’ Review: An Intimate Peek Into the Grind of Big-City Mumbai Life

The heat, hustle, glory and grind of modern-day Mumbai give way to something all the more mysterious and ever so beguiling in Payal Kapadia’s “All We Imagine as Light,” an expansive and intimate feature that has itself shined some late-breaking glory on this year’s Cannes Film Festival. As the first Indian filmmaker to compete for the Palme d’Or in three decades, Kapadia claimed a measure of victory well before this year’s edition; by exploring social precarity through soft tones of romantic yearning, her film seems likely to claim a prize before Cannes closes.

Indeed, jury president Greta Gerwig might even notice certain thematic similarities to her signature “Frances Ha,” as Kapadia’s film also traces the siren’s call of an indifferent metropolis just as likely to chew you up as to make your dreams come true.