In Bollywood-obsessed India, art-house film wins accolades, audiences

Indian cinema is best known for Bollywood extravaganzas, but an art-house film about three women navigating loneliness and love in a metropolis is gaining viewers and earning international recognition, including nominations to the Golden Globe awards.

“All We Imagine as Light,” a multi-language film set in Mumbai, has won several international awards this year, including the Grand Prix at Cannes, and is the first Indian film to be nominated in the Best Director category at the Golden Globes, which will be presented on Jan.5. It has also been nominated in the Best Picture category for non-English movies.

For director Payal Kapadia, the response to her debut film in her home country is an added bonus to the accolades it has earned abroad.

“It’s very difficult for independent films to get screens in India. I am very happy with the response. Now, I want to show the film in places in the country where it has not been shown so far, the smaller cities,” Kapadia told Reuters in an interview.

Director Payal Kapadia speaks during her interview with Reuters inside a college premises in Mumbai. Reuters

Independent, art-house films don’t find too many takers in India, where audiences are raised on a staple diet of Bollywood and other mainstream films, complete with song-and-dance routines, violence and melodrama, although more serious content on streaming platforms is slowly changing tastes.

With more than $2 million in box office sales globally, “All We Imagine as Light” also has entries to the Academy Awards for best picture, best director and best original screenplay, said a representative from Sideshow and Janus Films, which own the distribution rights in the US. But it was not India’s official submission to the Best Foreign Film category at the Oscars.

Kapadia, 38, said she thought of the idea of the film in a hospital waiting room. Initially conceived as a short film, it took eight years to make.

Former US President Barack Obama picked it as one of his favourite films of the year, in a list he shared on social media.

The story revolves around the friendship and love lives of three immigrant women who live and work in Mumbai, the congested metropolis of more than 12 million people, an important leitmotif in her film.

“Mumbai is a city of many contradictions. While life can be tough here, it gives people a sense of freedom as well. We tried capturing that in the film too,” Kapadia said.

Reuters