The Grand Jury Prize at Cannes 2024 was awarded to the first Indian film selected for the official competition in the last three decades – All We Imagine As Light by director Payal Kapadia. This intimate and moving dramatic story, following its Cannes premiere, has also been recognized by dozens of festivals that included it in their programs – resulting in 30 awards and twice as many nominations, including BAFTA and Golden Globe in the foreign language film categories, as well as a nomination for Kapadia’s directing. All We Imagine As Light tells the story of the struggles and challenges faced by several nurses in bustling Mumbai. Their everyday lives, the decisions they make, and the paths they take are all circumscribed by societal constraints, yet these women manage to offer natural warmth and care both to those around them and to themselves. Here is what screenwriter and director Payal Kapadia shared with the audience at the New York Film Festival:
“It took 5-6 years to write the script for this film. The idea was born when I was in my final year at the Film and Television Institute in India. I had to work on my graduation project, and at the same time, my family was dealing with health issues—people were coming in and out of hospitals. When you have a specific cinematic assignment, life always turns out to be much more interesting—I observed this place with great pleasure, where predominantly women work, and the deeper I delved, the more I realized that 20 minutes would not be enough to tell their stories. And thus, this film was born.”
After its premiere at Cannes, Jessica Kang’s review in Variety concluded: “Light is everywhere around Kapadia’s heroines, and if they need to imagine it, it is only because they cannot see that it radiates from within, from their very essence.”
The positive reception of Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel’s directorial debut Armand in the Cannes competition program “Un Certain Regard” served as a harbinger for the awarding of the prestigious Golden Camera to this film, the work of the grandson of Liv Ullmann and Ingmar Bergman. The 37-year-old Renate Reinsve stars in this story – her performance once again attests to her mastery as one of the finest European actresses of her generation.
A few years ago, Reinsve won the Best Actress award at Cannes for her role in Joachim Trier’s The Worst Person in the World, and Bulgarian audiences also saw her in her film debut – Oslo, August 31, presented at Sofia Film Festival in 2012. In Thyondel’s film, Reinsve portrays Elizabeth, a character whose former glory had begun to fade. She receives a surprising invitation to a parent-teacher meeting, where she is bombarded with caustic accusations, and a network of conflicts between parents and teachers suddenly emerges. As Elizabeth struggles to uncover the truth amidst empty classrooms and dark corridors, a chaotic battle for redemption ensues, dominated by madness and manic passions.
Armand was included in the list of 15 titles from which the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences selected works to nominate in the “Best International Film” category, and at the European Film Awards in December 2024, it won the prestigious “European Discovery – FIPRESCI Award.”
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