Cannes Film Festival: Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine As Light enters Competition section

Thirty years after Shaji N Karun’s Swaham, another Indian film will be competing at the 77th Cannes Film Festival this year. Directed by Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) alumna Payal Kapadia, All We Imagine As Light is her debut feature film which will be screened in the competition section, the festival committee announced on Thursday.

This is not the first time Payel Kapadia got a nod from this prestigious festival. Earlier, her film, A Night of Knowing Nothing, won the Best Documentary award in 2021. Her another film Afternoon Clouds was selected in the Cinéfondation category in 2017. 

This time, Payel’s film will be competing against Yorgos Lanthimos’s Kind of Kindness, Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis and Iranian filmmaker Ali Abbasi’s The Apprentice, Karim Aïnouz’s Motel Destino, Andrea Arnold’s Bird, Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Perez, Sean Baker’s Anora, David Cronenberg’s The Shrouds, Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance, Miguel Gomes’s Grand Tour, Christophe Honoré'’s Marcello Mio and Jia Zhang-Ke’s Feng Liu Yi Dai (Caught by the Tides).

Many filmmakers across the country congratulated Payel after the announcement. Bauddhayan Mukherji wrote, “It has taken India 30 years to have a film in the main competition at Festival de Cannes. Payal's film will be competing with Ali Abbasi’s The Apprentice, Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis, and Yorgos Lanthimos’s Kind of Kindness amongst others. A very big day for Indian cinema. Super happy and super proud. A huge shout out to Payal, Zico Maitra, the team at Chalk n Cheese, and everyone associated with this Indo-French co-production.” He also congratulated Sandhya Suri’s feature debut, Santosh, which has been selected for Un Certain Regard and it features Shahana Goswami. “This is going to be a nice Indian summer at Cannes this year,” he wrote.