19 September,2024 02:57 PM IST | Mumbai | mid-day online correspondent
Still from All We Imagine As Light
Payal Kapadia's directorial 'All We Can Imagine As Light' will get a theatrical release in the start of Kerala starting September 21. With this, the hopes of the film's qualifying for the Oscars from the country live on. The film made history at the recently concluded Cannes Film Festival 2024.
Rana Daggubati's Spirit Media has acquired the Indian distribution rights for the film and will be releasing the film in Kerala. The film has dialogues in Malayalam and Hindi. The film will be made available in limited cinemas from September 21 to complete Oscar qualifier criteria. The rules demand that a film qualifying for Oscars should play in cinemas for at least seven days before September 30. The film, which won the Grand Prix at Cannes earlier this year, stars Kani Kusruti, Divya Prabha and Hridhu Haroon, all of whom hail from Kerala.
The film directed by Payal was backed by Thomas Hakim and Julian Graff through their France-based company Petit Chaos, in co-production with the Indian companies, Zico Maitra's Chalk & Cheese Films and Ranabir Das' Another Birth, as well as by the Netherlands's BALDR Film, Luxembourg's Les Films Fauves, Italy's Pulpa Films and France's Arte France Cinéma.
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Earlier, France had announced the film as a contender for the Oscars to represent their country, they later chose auteur Jacques Audiard's redemption thriller 'Emilia Perez' for the international feature film race.
In 30 years, Payal Kapadia's 'All We Imagine As Light' became the first Indian film to be selected for Palme d'Or, the main competition at Cannes 2024 Film Festival. Payal Kapadia accepted the award from the jury on the closing night of the prestigious film festival. She also invited on stage her lead cast-Kani Kusruti, Chayya Kadam and Divya Prabha- while accepting the award and thanked them. "It really takes a village," said Kapadia while thanking her team behind the film.
"This film is about the friendship between three different women and often times women are pitted against each other. This is the way our society is designed and it is really unfortunate. But for me, friendship is an important relationship. It can lead to greater solidarity and inclusivity and empathy towards each other which is why I feel these are the values which we should always strive for," Payal said in her acceptance speech receiving a thunderous applause.
Kapadia was in competition with "European heavyweights such as Jacques Audiard and Yorgos Lanthimos, American auteurs David Cronenberg and Paul Schrader, and Asian visionary Jia Zhangke", as 'IndieWire' reminds us.
The film did leave international critics impressed after the screening, with Peter Bradshaw of 'The Guardian' showering praise on it for its "freshness and emotional clarity" and comparing Kapadia's "fluent and absorbing" storytelling with Satyajit Ray's in his classics, 'Mahanagar' and 'Aranyer Din Ratri'.
