Interview with Payal Kapadia, member of the Feature Films jury
From having her short film Afternoon Clouds selected for the 2017 Festival de Cannes Cinéfondation to having her documentary A Night of Knowing Nothing awarded the 2021 Cannes Golden Eye, Payal Kapadia, winner of the Grand Prix in 2024 for All We Imagine as Light, gracefully steps into her role as a member of the Feature Films Jury in 2025.
You received the Grand Prix last year: does it encourage female filmmakers in India to direct more films?
It is very important for films like ours to get this recognition. Thanks to the Grand Prix, we got a lot of distribution in over 60 countries, including my own country, India. I think there is a positive movement toward more female directors in India, and I am part of that. Even last year, we had another film at Un Certain Regard from an Indian director, Santosh by Sandhya Suri.
What is your inspiration as a filmmaker?
Everything is inspiring for me: waking up today, seeing the clouds, seeing the way the ocean moves, meeting you. I think that is the great thing about being a filmmaker. The biggest privilege is that it makes life more interesting than art. You can make a film about anything, and it makes things more interesting, I think.
All We Imagine as Light was your first fiction feature: will your next film also be fiction?
My next project is very fictional. Once you start doing fiction, it is like an addiction. Because the sky is the limit. You can explore anything and go anywhere. And it’s a lot for me. But I also like to shoot in a way that feels like a documentary, even though it is complete fiction. So I like very much to collapse these boundaries in cinema and try to create my own form, which is very important for me because I believe that cinema is also about language, not just the story. Both things come together. I am always excited by formalist questions and explorations.
Can you tell us a bit more about this next project?
I am working on two films that are both based in Mumbai, just like All We imagine as Light. These three films will become like a triptych about the city, where the main character is the city.
What do you think is so special about Mumbai?
Well, I’m from Mumbai, so it’s the city that I know the best. There are lots of different kinds of people there, coming from different cultural backgrounds, from different castes and social classes, which makes Mumbai unique in India. For me, it is a city where, as a woman, you are a little bit freer compared to many other parts of the country. It is easier for women to live alone, go out at night, and be independent. But there are some other aspects as well: it is a very expensive city, rapidly changing with a lot of gentrification that forces people to move away from the city as well. Like any big city, Mumbai is changing really quickly, and I feel I need to reflect on that change in my films.
You’re a city girl.
I am definitely a city girl. I like to see how the same city is viewed by different filmmakers because it’s so subjective. I watched a lot of French films that are city-based, like Cléo de 5 à 7 (Cleo from 5 to 7) (1962) by Agnès Varda, and films from all over the world, like the ones from Edward Yang, Wong Kar-wai, Chantal Akerman, etc. You can have a completely different relationship with each city. I like to study that, to see how I feel when I go to a place. I went to Hong Kong recently for my movie, and it was so different from how I’ve seen it in the movies. And that’s also interesting because that is the purpose of art, to present a different view that somebody hadn’t thought about. I’m always excited to provide an artistic proposal.
