All We Imagine as Light Review: Payal Kapadia's Tender Mumbai Masterpiece

Is All We Imagine as Light good?

Yes — it is one of the finest dramas of the year. Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine as Light carries a perfect Critic Score of 100, an Audience Score of 85, and a Metascore of 93, alongside a 4.2 on Letterboxd and 7.1 on IMDb. That’s an unusually tight spread between critical and audience reception, and it reflects a film that rewards patience with real emotional payoff rather than relying on flashy technique to win people over.

What is All We Imagine as Light about?

It’s a quiet, richly observed drama about three women finding their footing amid the anonymity of a sprawling city. Set among the hospital corridors and cramped apartments of contemporary Mumbai, the film follows a trio of nurses whose personal lives — a distant marriage, a secret romance, a looming eviction — unfold against the daily rhythms of the city that both isolates and connects them. Writer-director Payal Kapadia, who won the Cannes Grand Prix for the film, treats the textures of working-class urban life not as backdrop but as the very substance of the story, letting small gestures and long silences carry as much weight as dialogue.

Should you watch All We Imagine as Light?

Absolutely, especially if you’re drawn to patient, character-driven cinema over plot-heavy drama. With scores this consistently high across both critics and general audiences, it’s a rare case where the acclaim isn’t just an insider consensus — everyday viewers are responding to it too. The film asks for some patience in its unhurried early stretches, but that investment pays off as its three central relationships deepen and the story shifts toward the coast in its later passages. Viewers who want their films to move briskly may find the pacing a hurdle; those willing to sit with it will likely find it quietly devastating.

How does All We Imagine as Light compare to Two Days, One Night?

Fans of the Dardenne brothers’ Two Days, One Night will find a kindred sensibility here — a camera that watches ordinary women navigate constrained circumstances without ever flattening them into symbols. Like that film, All We Imagine as Light trusts everyday detail over dramatic incident, finding tension in a missed phone call or a shared cup of tea rather than in contrived plot turns. Where it distinguishes itself is in its specific sense of place: the monsoon light, the packed local trains, and the hospital night shifts of Mumbai give the film a texture that feels lived-in rather than researched, and its final turn toward the Ratnagiri coastline offers a release that few similarly restrained dramas allow themselves.