I want 'All We Imagine As Light' to be watched in theatres, says filmmaker Payal Kapadia

CHENNAI: Cannes, San Sebastian and Chicago. These are some of the cities in which Payal Kapadia presented her film All We Imagine As Light and swept away awards including the prestigious Grand Prix award in Cannes. Now, the filmmaker is in Chennai as the film will hit the screens in a couple of weeks. "I want the audience to watch my film in theatres. I made All We Imagine As Light purely for theatres and not only for festival rounds and awards. The audience coming to theatres will be the biggest award. It has to run and be viable for the producers. When we make a film, we keep the audience in mind and not festivals," she says.

There has been a common perception that films that win awards across global festivals may not intrigue the audience in theatres. Payal strongly explains, "No. I always make films with a hope that there will be people buying tickets for my movies. Festivals came in between and when we screened the movie there, distributors like Spirit Media showed their support. For an independent movie maker, the problem is not in making a film but releasing it."

The film has Kani Kusruti, Divya Prabha and Hridhu Haroon in lead roles. She is all praise for the talent pool. "I don't speak Malayalam and we all had a workshop on bridging the gap. For three weeks, we all stayed together and had various discussions, trying out scenes. They did a terrific job. All the characters in the film have their own flaws and we discussed those things as well," Payal remarks.

All We Imagine As Light is poetic and discusses friendship, love and self-discovery and has an interesting take on relationships. "I wanted to talk about intergenerational friendships between women and how our society is designed in a way that sees such friendship in a complicated way. I wanted to give a possibility to these things through my film where when family isn't supportive, your friends can be. Over the years, India has an amazing history of cinema. Malayalam filmmakers like Aravindan, John Abraham, KG George and K Balachander in Tamil have made such films. However, not everyone back in the day had access to their beautiful work. Now we have OTT with subtitles that take various films to people across the world. Cinema has always existed," she states.