Mumbai comes alive in Payal Kapadia’s lyrical and lovely sophomore feature All We Imagine as Light: a soft, delicate film never lacking in depth, but offering to take your hand and nurture you for just a little bit. It is a balm for our times, our year, wherever and whenever it may find you: the story of Nurse Prabha (Kani Kusruti) and her younger roommate Anu (Divya Prabha), as the relationships with the men in their lives ebb and flow. A quiet trip to a small seaside village reinvigorates what the women can feel and appreciate, in themselves and through their desires, just watching the world go by.

Kapadia is a self-confessed Letterboxd addict, and the cinephilia shows: her second feature (but first fiction outing, after 2021 doc A Night of Knowing Nothing) is transportive, a deceptively complex tapestry of modern-day life in India that reaches out to a global audience and says, ‘I see you. We feel the same things.’ Calvin calls it “just beautiful, without insistence on itself,” while Ash appreciates the “very serene, calm and soothing movie that leaves you with a lot of happy hormones at the end.” That last note feels good: a film with emotional depth that you have little choice but to let entirely wash over you. To take it all in.

This is such a beautiful feature set in Mumbai—could you share your favorites that also take place here?

Payal Kapadia: Oh, this is a tough question. There are some films from the ’80s or ’70s, from a director called Basu Chatterjee. There’s a film called Chhoti Si Baat, which has a lot of iconic Mumbai spots in it and captures the zeitgeist of the time. Sai Paranjape made a film called Katha, which is based on a chawl, which is a very Mumbai architectural housing society.

Saeed Akhtar Mirza’s films are amazing. He made a film called Salim Langde Pe Mat Ro, which is a very quintessential Mumbai film about an underdog chap who has some kind of existential crisis. Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro is a great film as well! There’s also a documentary by Madhusree Dutta called Seven Islands and a Metro, which is a very interesting film, and, of course, Mira Nair’s Salaam Bombay! is an epic Bombay film—you can’t forget about that.

When you were making your film, what was important in terms of the way you were going to represent the city?

We wanted to steer clear of very typically iconic Mumbai landmarks. What we felt was very important, and we believe is a landmark in Mumbai, is the local trains—like what you call the subway, which is not a subway for us, because it’s overground. It’s like the main heart line of Mumbai, because if you live there, you will have to take the train. Otherwise, it’s crazy traffic and you’ll be in trouble, and it’s also expensive, so the trains are the lifelines of the city.

When you’re sitting on a train, it feels like you’re in this long tracking shot, and it gives you this beautiful sense of the city as it passes you by in different areas. You get a sense of history, the sense of flux and change… the feeling of the lights as they come and pass you, the kind of tiredness you see in these lives all moving together—there’s something so cinematic.

What are some of your favorite films about female friendship?

I really like Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle, from Éric Rohmer. It’s a very different Rohmer film, because it’s not the usual holiday love story. I also love Chantal Akerman’s I’m Hungry, I’m Cold, and Agnès Varda’s One Sings, the Other Doesn’t, which is also about many, many years of friendship.

Could you talk about the music in your film? Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou’s piano motif from ‘The Homeless Wanderer’ is such a beautiful piece; it constantly takes you back to a place, even if you’re just hearing it for the first time. In parallel with the rest of the score, it’s very moving in an unexpected way.

I didn’t know Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou’s music when I was writing the film—it was introduced to me by my editor. I like to have music that is deceptively simple, which feels as if it’s not a very complex piece with its instrumentation. It’s the kind of music that I love in films. I was completely mesmerized, because it has this feeling of being in love in the early stages, and the delight, when everything feels so good. The city, which is really shitty, feels amazing, and you want to take the bus, and you want to go kissing in the park. This feeling, the music had it, and it was like a reverie.

Are there any unexpected films that ended up influencing All We Imagine as Light? I only ask as my colleague and I were saying how much the final scene brings to mind Y Tu Mamá También.

We definitely did talk about that film, and for this particular scene we also spoke about a beautiful scene in La Dolce Vita, where [Marcello] Mastroianni is there with this young girl and he says to her, ‘You look like an angel.’ I thought about this a lot, having this wonderful person hanging out in this shack, this really godforsaken place, and she’s doing her own thing. She’s like this beacon of hope for this younger generation of girls who are trying to live the life they want to live.

But there are so many, because we are such cinephiles and watch so many films. We connect everything to everything! There was Chantal Akerman’s News From Home, which helped us look at cities; the way New York was shot at magic hour was something we really got obsessed with in trying to capture Bombay. Then Cléo from 5 to 7, another nonfiction/fiction film mix in a city.

As this began as your final film school project and went on to win a prize in Cannes, what do you wish you could have told yourself at film school? And, crucially, how would that advice change if you were giving it to someone starting out today? We know the industry is so in flux, and it made me think of the line in the film where somebody says, “You’d better get used to impermanence.”

It’s true. You only hear about success stories. You don’t hear that for every one acceptance, you got five rejection emails. It was a long time of [receiving] those as well. Nobody puts that up on their social media. It’s really confusing for young filmmakers, and it was for me as well. It’s about knowing we’ve all gone through this process and to keep at it—but, also, to keep at one thing, because it can be very distracting. You want to make this, you want to make that, you want to do one million things. Sticking to one idea for many years can be unnerving and tiring, but it’s the only way. I would tell myself to just focus, and do the job.