ONE SMALL CORNER OF THE WORLD

All We Imagine as Light 🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱 5 Maryellens

Janus Films

All We Imagine as Light, winner of the Grand Prix at Cannes, begins with documentary footage from the Mumbai waterfront. It’s before dawn, but the great city is already roaring to life, with vendors setting up stalls to buy and sell electronics, clothes, fruit. The vast engine of global trade is grinding on, dispatching countless millions on their daily mission of survival.

Soon writer-director Payal Kapadia narrows her focus, and we’re on a train with Prabha (Kani Kusruti), who’s heading to her shift as nurse in a big city hospital. She hasn’t seen her husband, who moved to Germany for a factory job, in many years and spends most of her off hours with her found family: Anu (Divya Prabha), her younger roommate and a fellow nurse, and Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam), a cook at the hospital. We watch the three women negotiate the ups and downs of life in Mumbai as gracefully as they can. Eventually, when Parvaty decides to move home to her village on the seaside, Prabha and Anu come along.

It’s mesmerizing film, aching with empathy, with a light touch that immediately reminded me of two of my all-time faves, the Italian Neorealist masterpieces Bicycle Thieves and Nights of Cabiria. Kapadia tells a big story by focusing on single faces and small moments. Through the eyes of these three struggling women, the director takes the measure of globalization itself.

Currently showing at Lincoln Center and other select theaters. A version of this review first appeared in Bloomberg Pursuits on Oct. 19.