What happens when reality meets escapism? Payal Kapadia on the new language of Indian cinema

How can independent cinema in India adapt its narratives to find a footing in a landscape largely dominated by male-led, adrenaline-focused box-office hits? 

When Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine as Light (2024) won the Grand Prix and was screened at the 77th Cannes Film Festival this year, it wasn’t the first time the Mumbai filmmaker made a mark internationally with her no-strings-attached independent creation. In 2017, her 13-minute short Afternoon Clouds was the only Indian film selected for Cannes. Later, in 2021, her debut feature A Night of Knowing Nothing received the Golden Eye for best documentary film.

The Mumbai girl’s 2024 winner, while showcasing the very real, day-to-day lives of people on home turf, has several elements of fantasy. There's Prabha (Kani Kusruti) who falls into a memory box when her husband, living in Germany, sends her a gift—a rice cooker—even embracing it when she's alone. Meanwhile, Anu (Divya Prabha) dreams about a world where she can be with her lover, a forbidden relationship because he follows another religion. The second half of the film has the two protagonists fantasising about a life that could be.

While mainstream Bollywood has thus far largely thrived on fantasy and escapism— which fulfills a cultural need for spectacle and entertainment—independent cinema has been more rooted in the realities of daily life, hardships, and small victories, offering a truer reflection of the masses. The creative lines are gradually blurring. 

This trend has been prevalent in the film industry in south India and other regional cinema, like in Tamil film Attakathi (2012), for quite some time. “It feels like a slice of life, with a sense of comedy and romance. Films today have a sense of reality and lightness in the mainstream. [The Marathi film] Sairat (2016), for instance,was set in daily life, but had an epic structure and talked about serious issues the common man faces,” explains Kapadia, on why its Hindi remake Dhadak (2018) came to be. 

Rooted in reality

All of Bollywood isn’t based on escapism or grandeur alone anymore. For instance, in Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s 12th Fail (2023), Vikrant Massey won hearts as the protagonist IPS officer Manoj Kumar Sharma attempting to crack the UPSC exam. It was made on a budget of ₹20 crore, and grossed over ₹69 crore worldwide. Besides, Bollywood has made audiences more open to the idea of escapism within reality. “Like [in] Rangeela (1995)—a film about normal people living in Mumbai, when there’s suddenly a song and dance in the middle. India’s language of cinema is much wider than anywhere else because anywhere else, they’d question the randomness of it. So, we have more room for possibility,” says Kapadia.

Bollywood, like independent cinema, has reflected the discourse of the time it was created in, such as Raj Kapoor’s films—which were released when India was a new country—had a hopeful tone about the future. For example, Shree 420 (1956) was about a boy from Allahabad who walks to Mumbai, the city of dreams, to earn a living (and of course falls in love as well). Chori Chori (1956) has Kapoor play a freelance reporter who falls in love with a multimillionaire's daughter, while Ab Dilli Dur Nahin (1957) follows the journey of a boy to Delhi to meet the then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to seek justice for his father's wrongful death. “Films like Jaagte Raho (1956) were about the common man, but with great songs,” explains Kapadia, alluding to tracks like Mera Joota Hai Japani—aspirational and about staying proud of your heritage—while Pyar Hua Ikrar Hua Hai that promoted the possibility of love in the most illogical situations. 

Today, social media and the Internet have spread awareness about films in various languages among people, who are, for instance, watching Telugu films even if they don’t speak the language, considers Kapadia. “It’s making us connect to cinema from our country from a different state, which used to be quite compartmentalised before. People [in places outside Kerala] are excited when a Malayalam film releases,” she observes. 

With All We Imagine as Light, Kapadia hoped viewers would find something relatable in the lives of two nurses from Kerala living in Mumbai to work in a hospital. She portrays how they find solace in the loneliness of living in a big city and the companionship they share as they dream, hope, and jolt back to reality. “Especially women,” she explains about the plot. 

In an industry usually devoid of women's narratives, Kapadia’s film brings to the fore the female gaze, which, she reckons, will always be where her works will come from. Much like Alankrita Shrivastava's Lipstick Under My Burkha (2016), which showed women of all ages and societal sections exploring their sexuality. Similarly, Gangubai Kathiawadi (2022) focusses on the rise of Gangubai from rags to power as she becomes the ‘Madame’ of a brothel, owning her sexuality in the process. Both give a peek into the female gaze, otherwise absent from the male-dominated plots that rule commercial Bollywood films.

Relatable reasoning

Kapadia tapped into her love for films by Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami—stories set in Iran, far from our reality in India. “Yet I connected with them, because the more specific you are about the culture, situation, premise, story and characters, the more immediate the universality of the story. Because people tend to bridge the gaps of knowledge that they have by connecting more emotionally than intellectually,” she explains. 

For Kapadia, it is this localisation of art that makes it global. “The more local and specific it is, the more you can really invest in the characters, and the believability and authenticity of the character as a human being in the story, focussing on its emotional aspect. And fundamental emotions are universal.”.  

We all feel sadness, the prick of a pin when poked, feel like crying at times, loneliness and dejection in love, or the longing of romance—all emotions brought to life by Kusruti and Prabha in All We Imagine as Light. “These emotions are only tinted by cultural specificity; you feel them and form an instant connection. The human mind is liberating and a place of plenty of possibilities. Which is why people relate to art when it’s not generic or trying to pander to anyone,” she adds. 

The credit, here, perhaps goes to social media for starting the relatability revolution that has extended to behind all cameras and propelling various art forms to reach a larger audience, while keeping individual aesthetics in place, breaking the stereotype that art is “not for the masses”. HubSpot’s State of Marketing Report 2023 reveals that 66 per cent of social media marketers believe humour is the most effective element in their strategies, closely followed by relatable content at 63 per cent and trendy topics at 59 per cent. Meanwhile, film festivals are getting more inclusive, allowing for more local and relatable narratives to seep through. In 2023, at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah, a significant portion of featured films had narratives involving disabilities and LGBTQ+ issues, besides having a history of backing first-time directors through grants and residency labs. After much criticism, even the Oscars gave in in 2024, where 32 per cent of nominees in the 19 categories were women, besides 20 per cent nominees belonging to an underrepresented racial/ethnic groups.

The perils of budgets and distribution

The most crucial difference between independent and mainstream cinema is the budget and who’s funding it. To make a form that is larger than life—like seen in a Karan Johar film—filmmakers need a sizeable budget. Kapadia couldn’t recreate Mumbai in a studio nor did she have the budget to do so. So, she took the documentary-style route as that would best capture the essence of the city—a pivotal aspect of the plot (the two women bond because they happen to be living in another city). Through Kapadia’s lens, the loneliness in a crowded Mumbai local, ruckus-inducing rains that still bring peace, finding comfort in quick roadside meals amidst a sea of people, a couple trying to find privacy in public spaces, or the vast stretches of blue tarpaulin rooftops, are all elements that capture this essence. “If I want to do a big dance sequence my producer will say there’s no money,” she laughs. “Then I’ll think if I can do it in some other way. The budget will impact the way you shoot but the story is what you have to be truthful to,” she adds. 

Kapadia’s biggest learning has been making people aware that the film exists, whether independent or commercial. “Earlier we would have listings in newspapers. We didn’t have enough money to put into big ads and all. That’s when word of mouth, critics and journalists come in,” she says. 

The nationwide release of All We Imagine as Light in November was a win for independent cinema. A result of Kapadia’s keenness on the film getting a theatrical release because growing up, she loved watching films in cinemas. “I loved being in a room full of strangers, feeling the same emotions, crying in the darkness in the company of strangers. Post Covid, when individualism has become the norm, [going to the] cinema is a collective feeling we can still have. OTT is great and reaches out to a lot of people, but a lot of people also don’t have access to OTT platforms,” she observes. As OTT platforms today have increased the shelf life of films and shows, box office numbers don’t solely dictate a film’s success, overshadowing its talent, storytelling and narrative depth, she adds. 

There’s no template or standardisation in making any films because different things touch people differently, says Kapadia. “And this only makes room for diversity. People in India like to eat buffets and thalis. Let’s not make distinctions at a time when we are fighting for representation,” she signs off. 

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