Changemakers 2024: Payal Kapadia and the Cinematic Celebration of the Ordinary

At the 70th Cannes Film Festival in 2017, India’s sole official selection was a 13-minute-long film titled Afternoon Clouds. The short had been conceptualised as a studio exercise by Payal Kapadia, a graduate student of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII).

In 2021, Kapadia, no longer a student, returned to Cannes with A Night of Knowing Nothing, which won the Golden Eye documentary prize. Kapadia’s third time at Cannes in 2024 worked a different charm—her feature debut All We Imagine as Light that explores the lives of three women in Mumbai—was awarded the Grand Prix, the festival’s second-highest prize.

The film is a lot of firsts: Kapadia is the first Indian filmmaker to win the award at the festival. All We Imagine As Light is also the first Indian film in 30 years and the first by an Indian female director to be showcased in the main competition.

Playing with Form

In the world of Indian cinema, films such as Kapadia’s are independent, outside mainstream offerings. Mixing fictional elements with non-fiction was an idea born in film school. For instance, A Night of Knowing Nothing is decidedly non-fiction in its use of archival footage—it documents the student protests at FTII in 2015—but it weaves in elements of fiction through the protagonist, who is a fictional university student who recounts what happens in her life.

Playing around with different formats produces experimental styles that do not always lend themselves to easy categorisation. But Kapadia is not bound by these restrictions. “I like to try different things with the cinematic form, and that’s what excites me. Maybe it also comes from my mother being an artist and watching how much she constantly rethought her own practice and developed it,” Kapadia tells Outlook Business.

Others share her view. “Let us not create a binary between mainstream filmmaking and independent filmmaking. A filmmaker can straddle both,” says Shohini Ghosh, honorary director at Jamia Premchand Archives and professor at AJK Mass Communication Research Centre, Delhi. An independent film, Ghosh adds, can be fiction, non-fiction or hybrid but it can thrive only if there is a culture that creates a space for it to exist.

And yet this culture has often been hard to find. While winning at an international film festival brings validation and accolades, closer home Kapadia has had to overcome hurdles such as funds, distribution and audience tastes that make her triumph truly significant.

The Road to Cannes

In 2016, Kapadia was disqualified from a foreign-exchange programme and lost her scholarship for her participation in the students’ protest against the proposed appointment of actor-turned-politician Gajendra Chauhan as FTII chair.

Funds have been another obstacle. Funding for All We Imagine As Light came from the French production company Petit Chaos and other European sources. “It’s a real challenge to make films and to get funding and to be able to sustain yourself, throughout this process,” Kapadia explains. “It’s really hard and it’s normal that people also have two jobs. So, it’s not easy at all to make films. Filmmaking in India is hard.”

And finally, there is the question of audience preference. “The audience [in India] is not ready for parallel cinema. Internationally, you get an audience that is ready to understand your art. While the 19-35 age group has very different tastes, the audience is the stumbling block when it comes to experimental films,” says director and script writer Shomshuklla.

Ghosh agrees. “A film festival recognising a certain film is wonderful and may be seen as a recognition of a less popular style of filmmaking. But most of those who are applauding that win, perhaps even without watching it, are cheering for the win and not the film,” she says.

But there is light at the end of the tunnel. In India, actor and producer Rana Daggubati’s production house Spirit Media has acquired the India distribution rights to Kapadia’s film. NDTV reports that when asked about his decision to present an independent film, Daggubati replied that he was not sure about the difference between independent and mainstream cinema.

Is the attention that independent cinema gets in India changing? “We’ve had a few pre-screenings already in different cities, and we’ve had a really good response. So, I’m nervous as anybody is before the release of their film. But the fact that we’re getting it out at all, for me, that is really encouraging,” she says.