Cannes 2024: Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine As Light scripts history, becomes first Indian film to win Grand Prix

Payal Kapadia wins the Grand Prix for All We Imagine As Light at the 77th Cannes Film Festival. (Photo via X)

Payal Kapadia scripted history at the 77th Cannes Film Festival, becoming the first Indian director to win the Grand Prix, the second-most prestigious award after the Palme d’Or. Kapadia won the honour for her debut feature All We Imagine As Light, starring Kani Kusruti and Divya Prabha as Malayali nurses working in Mumbai. Payal was present with the cast of the film, Kani Kusruti, Divya Prabha and Chhaya Kadam at the awards ceremony held on Saturday night, the last day of the festival.

Le Grand Prix est attribué à ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT de PAYAL KAPADIA.
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The Jury Prize goes to ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT by PAYAL KAPADIA.#Cannes2024 #Palmares #Awards #GrandPrix pic.twitter.com/Ew5SfmFmvZ

— Festival de Cannes (@Festival_Cannes) May 25, 2024

All We Imagine As Light has been one of the highest ranked and rated films at Cannes this year and it received an eight-minute standing ovation, one of the longest standing ovations at Cannes Film Festival this year.

All We Imagine As Light follows the life of a nurse Prabha (Kani Kusruti), who receives an unexpected gift from her long estranged husband. In between, her younger friend and roommate, Anu (Divya Prabha) is on a lookout for a quiet spot with her lover.

The Grand Prix should not be confused with the Grand Prix du Festival International du Film (1939–1954; 1964–1974), which was the highest prize of the festival and a precursor to the Palme d'Or. Chetan Anand's Neecha Nagar was the only Indian film to win the Grand Prix du Festival International du Film in 1946.

"In her acceptance speech, Payal Kapadia thanked the cast, her crew, and the producers for supporting her “weird idea”.

In her speech, she told the Cannes Film Festival organisers, "Don't wait for another 30 years to have another Indian film (in the competition section)."

‘All We Imagine as Light’ filmmaker, Payal Kapadia, wins Grand Prix #Cannes2024 pic.twitter.com/BGpImLAiG9

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The FTII rebel, who was at the forefront of one of the longest student protests at the Film and Television Institute of India, Pune, in 2015, further added, "This is a triumph for the Artist, the Student, the Political Voice, the few who continue to stand up and persevere with their art in an atmosphere that has demonstrated time and time again that it has no patience for it."

The mainly Malayalam-language, India-French co-production was the first Indian title to be selected for the prestigious Competition section at Cannes in 30 years after Shaji N Karun’s Malayalam film Swaham, which competed with Pulp Fiction for the top prize in 1994.

Veteran avant-garde artist Nalini Malani's daughter Payal Kapadia is also the first Indian woman nominated in this category and this is India's very first Grand Prix win, which is especially significant considering that All We Imagine as Light is 38-year-old Kapadia’s first feature-length fiction film.

The jury for the 77tth edition was led by Barbie director Greta Gerwig and included Hirokazu Kore-eda, Eva Green, Lily Gladstone, Nadine Labaki and Omar Sy.

Kapadia was up against 21 other films and cinematic heavyweights, many of them by the heavy-hitters of world cinema. These included Iran’s Mohammad Rasoulof’s The Seed of the Sacred Fig (which won the Jury Prize), Yorgos Lanthimos’s Kinds of Kindness (which picked up the Best Actor award), Sean Baker’s Anora (which walked away with the Palme d'Or), Francis Ford Coppola’s Megapolis (which won him an honorary Palme d'Or), Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Perez (which picked up the Best Actress award), Jia Zhang-Ke’s Caught By The Tides, Christophe Honore’s Marcello Mia, Miguel Gomes’s Grand Tour (which won him the Best Director), David Cronenberg’s The Shrouds and Michel Hazanavicius’s The Most Precious of Cargoes.

Anora, about a stripper who marries the son of a Russian oligarch, won the top prize, the Palme d’Or.

George Lucas, the creator of the Star Wars franchise, was given an honorary Palme d’Or.

History was also made in the parallel Un Certain Regard section. Production designer and actor Anasuya Sengupta shared the acting award for The Shameless with Abou Sangre in The Story of Souleymane. In Bulgarian director Konstantin Bojanov’s film, Sengupta plays Renuka, a sex worker who has a life-altering relationship with Devika (Omara Shetty). The Shameless has been filmed in Nepal and Mumbai.

Kapadia won the the Oeil d’or (Golden Eye) for her documentary A Night of Knowing Nothing (2019). Her Cannes stint started with her FTII diploma film shown at La Cinef (then called Cinefondation) film schools competition in 2017.

Another FTII student triumphed at Cannes this year. Sunflowers Were the First Ones to Know picked up the La Cinef award in the student film category. Chidanand S Naik’s film, about an elderly woman who steals the village rooster, has cinematography by Suraj Thakur, editing by Manoj V and sound by Abhishek Kadam.

The ACID Cannes section’s line-up included the Ladakh-set In Retreat by Maisam Ali, who is Kapadia’s batch mate. FTII graduate Santosh Sivan was awarded the Pierre Angenieux Tribute, which is given to cinematographers. Sivan, who has shot some of the best-known Indian films as well as directed a handful, is the first Asian to be given this award.