Amazon Prime is now streaming this ‘masterpiece’ drama film released last year, and Rotten Tomatoes have awarded it 100%. All We Imagine as Light is an international co-production written and directed by Payal Kapadia. It tells the story of three nurses who have come from small towns to work in modern day Mumbai.
The film’s synopsis reads: “All We Imagine as Light tells a story of two migrant women from the southern Indian state of Kerala, Prabha (Kani Kusruti) and Anu (Divya Prabha) as they struggle to build a life in Mumbai. The kind of Mumbai shown in the film is one that has almost never been explored in Indian cinema.” The film stars Kani Kusruti, Divya Prabha, Chhaya Kadam and Hridhu Haroon and it features Malayalam, Hindi and Marathi dialogue throughout.
It was first debuted at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival and here it won the Grand Prize, alongside an eight-minute standing ovation upon the film finishing.
All We Imagine as Light has made it to Rotten Tomatoes’ 100 club as critics have awarded it with a rating of 100%.
The critics consensus reads: “Capturing the here and now of modern India with the spontaneity of a candid photograph, All We Imagine as Light is a lustrous achievement that announces Payal Kapadia as an essential filmmaker.”
This film was met with a great reception and huge critical acclaim.
Writing in The Guardian, Peter Bradshaw, gave the film five stars and praised it as an “absorbing story of three nurses that is full of humanity”.
Nicholas Barber, writing in the BBC, also gave the film five stars.
The British film magazine Sight and Sound labelled it the best film of 2024 in its poll of more than 100 critics all over the world.
It was also ranked number one in the Best Movies of 2024 list from The New York Times, with Manohla Dargis writing that Kapadia “incorporates images of everyday people milling through the city, images that connect her characters to a sea of humanity and, by extension, to those of us watching”.
One Google review said: “It is a cinematic masterpiece and a delightfully visual epic, which is intense, minute, nuanced, introspective and soothing that gently offers a critique of Bollywoodish melodrama through the use of its unique fragmented yet cohesive plot.”
All We Imagine as Light is now streaming on Amazon Prime and the BFI Player.