Six months is a long time in anyone’s life. In writer-director Payal Kapadia’s case, it’s the amount of time it took for her to travel from, as she told me this summer, fame “is freaking me out a bit” to, as she said when we spoke recently, “maybe I’m not that shy after all”.

I reached out to Payal right after her movie, All We Imagine As Light (AWIAL), won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival this May. This interview began then and concluded in the run-up to the November 22 release of the film in India. The result of this exercise is a dissection of AWIAL and a realisation that success at the world’s most high-profile festival has changed Payal while we have been in conversation. 

AWIAL is the story of two Malayali nurses – Prabha, played by Kani Kusruti, and Anu, played by Divya Prabha. They are colleagues and flatmates negotiating Mumbai’s tricky terrain, made trickier by Anu’s romance with a Malayali Muslim called Shiaz (Hridhu Haroon), and a real estate corporation eyeing the home of Prabha’s Maharashtrian friend Parvati (Chhaya Kadam). It is a Malayalam film with additional dialogues in Hindi, a smattering of Marathi, Tamil, Gujarati and Bengali. 

At 38, Payal is already a Cannes veteran although AWIAL is her debut fiction feature. Her 2021 docufeature, A Night of Knowing Nothing, won the Golden Eye at Cannes. And her short film Afternoon Clouds, made while she was at the Film and Television Institute of India, was in the students’ competition at Cannes 2017. 

A Night of Knowing Nothing examined studenthood and youth during pan-India protests against the divisive policies of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government. AWIAL, a co-production between France’s Petit Chaos and India’s Chalk and Cheese Films, is equally – though less overtly – political. It’s unclear if this was why the Film Federation of India picked Kiran Rao’s Laapataa Ladies over AWIAL as the country’s entry for the Best International Feature Oscar race. 

What is clear is the jury’s cluelessness about the breadth of Indian cinema from FFI chief Ravi Kottarakara’s explanation that they felt AWIAL is “like a foreign film”. 

That blip apart, AWIAL’s triumphant journey continues, with glowing reviews, awards and nominations continuing to pour in at home and abroad. 

As you can imagine, there is a lot to ask Payal. This interview is part of a series, Director’s Cut, that I’ve been attempting since 2016. The approach is to speak to the maker of a new film after watching it, so as to avoid the generic questions that are inevitable when, as is the norm in India, the cast and crew give pre-release interviews without screening their films for the journalists they meet. Not every director is game for in-depth questions, contrary to what they publicly claim. Payal is not just open to the idea, she revels in our discussion. 

Excerpts: 

Indian cinema is at some kind of tipping point with the pandemic coming on top of the arrival of OTTs in the past decade, which has led to dramatic changes. In that context, does your award at Cannes have a significance for Indian cinema?

What I’m going to say might sound controversial. I think Indian cinema is thriving within our own country. So international festivals are good, but we shouldn’t think they’re the end of everything or the best. 

In a column published during the festival, I wrote that Indians tend to have extreme reactions to international recognition – some are dismissive of it, while some behave as if an Indian artist has arrived only if “the mighty West” notices them. Is that what you mean?

Exactly. I mean, sometimes international festivals don’t even understand our films, they don’t get the context or subtext. Don’t get me wrong – I’m grateful I could be at Cannes. But we have a strong system within our own country, and we’ve to think about our own ecosystem, our own festivals and audiences, and be glad about the diversity in our own cinema.

In Kerala, for example, you have film festivals in every district. So does Maharashtra where I’m from. India has audiences for all the different strands of cinema we make. And increasingly, filmmaking is becoming more accessible. It’s still expensive, but opportunities exist. With things like smaller cameras coming in, you see more female filmmakers because we don’t have to wait for anybody to give us money. Someone like Rima Das from Assam seems to do everything for her films – she shoots, she edits. And the more diversity we have among our filmmakers, the more interesting our cinema will automatically become.

Kani told me you first approached her eight years ago to play the younger nurse Anu, and not Prabha. 

(She laughs) Yes. We both grew old.

How long has this been going on?

It feels like forever. As an FTII student, I had to make a short film. At that time, I got interested in what it’s like to be a woman who comes to work in Mumbai. I spoke to some nurses, because in my private life I was surrounded by nurses from Kerala – at home, plus my father was in hospital. When I dug deeper though, I felt it should be a longer film, not my student project. So I kept it aside. But back then, I’d approached Kani to act as Anu.

As time went by, Mumbai and its contradictions crept into the project. During the pandemic, the storyline also got affected by the idea of people having to leave Bombay to return home. Getting finance took long. Then pre-production took a year because I don’t speak Malayalam, so my friend and colleague Robin Joy worked with me on the dialogue.

Then we worked with Kani and Divya on the dialogues. All that prep was important for me since it’s kind of my first film, so there’s a lot of learning. 

Why did you zero in on Malayali nurses while examining the immigrant experience in a big city?

At the hospital, I became good friends with some of the ladies. We discussed our personal lives. So I started thinking that there’s a desire to invisibilise certain jobs because of the way you’re supposed to be, like a nurse in a uniform who’s just there for everybody. But there are many emotional turmoils for these women who have to be away from home – the contradictions of the freedom along with the bonds that are far away are universal.

I felt I’d be able to explore many complexities and various women’s experiences through the characters in the film. For example, that lady in the opening who’s talking about her husband’s ghost – that’s also a story I’d heard. And I felt strongly towards the women I’d met. It’s not representation per se, but it felt like something I needed to talk about.

(Note: Mild spoilers coming up.) 

Two people in this film leave. One chooses to leave because they’re uncomfortable in Mumbai. The other is forced to leave. I found this interesting because I assumed you would show everybody adjusting and figuring things out in the city.

But it’s such a hard city. And I wanted to talk about those contradictions – that the city gives us freedom and opportunity, but it easily spits you out. It’s hard to afford to live comfortably. Some people can adjust, some can’t. That’s just the way Bombay is. This is true of many expensive cities around the world. Like a snake catching its tail, you’re earning money to live to earn money to live. So it was important for me that the characters also leave for some time. Because the city does not give you free time per se. You’re always either going to work, returning from work, working or doing chores. The idea of leisure is not really there.

I used to follow an Instagram page called Women of Leisure, which I liked because they were saying we don’t really see women relaxing. It’s true – women are always working, either at home or outside the house. So although the out-of-town leisure in the film doesn’t come for a pleasant reason, I wanted to at least explore the possibility.

(Note: Until very recently, Payal was anonymous on Instagram.)

Can we talk about that scene in which Prabha cuts her finger and snaps at Anu for spontaneously putting the finger in her mouth to suck out the blood?

Sure. Prabha just doesn’t like being touched in this way. She finds it over-familiar. When I presented the scene to Kani, she was like, “Oh, my God, yes. Prabha would definitely jump up like this” because she would not like certain personal boundaries being crossed. 

I’m a bit like that. I don’t easily like being hugged. It’s taken me a lot of time to be okay with that, especially after I came for a few months to France. People here kiss all the time to say hello and I’m like, please don’t touch. But here it feels rude.

Anu is more affectionate. She’s a bit crazy. She doesn’t have personal boundaries. She does what she wants. She’s more tactile. She eats the crab with her hands with joy. She loves touch. 

Prabha is different. Though her job as a nurse involves touching people’s bodies, personally she does not want to cross those lines of proximity. She doesn’t always feel comfortable with looking at a body either. This contradiction felt like a good way to talk about the differences between them.

Prabha is not warm, but she’s incredibly kind. They’re not friends, yet she pays the rent for this girl Anu who irritates her a lot at one level.  

Irritates her. (She repeats the words after me and laughs) They’re not friends, but when you move to a city like Bombay, you might stay as a PG with whoever has a free room. So a kind of friendship is developing. And Prabha is not the nicest character, but in a way she’s too nice. She wants to help her friend Parvati. Anu is not her friend per se, but she’ll feel the urge to help her because she’s young.

Is this a Bombay thing? To be this generous, even monetarily, with someone who’s not even her friend? 

No, no, it’s a Prabha thing. 

Kani felt it’s a Mallu thing.

It’s a Mallu thing. Yes, Kani told me that too. She also felt that Anu must be knowing somebody who knows Prabha. There would be some connection. She won’t be a random person who came and lived with Prabha. Kani said that as a Malayali, you would help this way. But in my head, it’s not the first time Anu has asked for the rent, so then it’s a little more a Prabha thing.

Have you had a lot of exposure to south Indians, Malayalis in particular, or do you just consciously avoid stereotyping? Did Robin, Divya and Kani help with this? 

They definitely helped a lot, a lot, a lot. And I learned along the way that even within Kerala there are many different communities, different ways of talking, different slang, dialects, accents, foods. I only touched the tip of the iceberg, but it was a good learning. 

Also, I grew up in Andhra Pradesh and had lots of Malayali and Tamilian classmates. 

(Note: Payal attended Rishi Valley School.)

In FTII too, one-third of the students are Malayalis, one-third are Bengali, the rest is us. So inevitably, we celebrated Onam. We even had a Mallu canteen where the food was obviously better. We watched films from John Abraham and other directors. Many technicians were Malayali. Maybe having so many friends and colleagues has made a difference. I cringe when I see representation that becomes blanket. 

All We Imagine As Light is set in Mumbai, where the Hindi film industry is based. Hindi cinema does not reflect the diversity of languages you hear in the city. On the other hand, the mix of languages in Malayalam films reflects the reality of the locations across which stories move. South Indian cinema in general does that, unlike the Hindi industry. Were you tempted to make this a Hindi film?

Not at all. I love having multiple languages in my films, as you know from A Night Of Knowing Nothing. I think because I matured in my ideas at a place like FTII or even coming from a city like Mumbai where you hear so many languages. And language becomes a way to create privacy in a public space. Like me and my sister sometimes break into Kutchi when we want to say something to each other privately. I’ve seen Malayalis also do that – they’ll break into the language, and then of course I feel left out, but I get it. 

I really like this about Mumbai, especially when you travel in the ladies’ compartment of a train and you hear Marathi, Gujarati, Tamil. I cannot talk about Mumbai without the multiplicity of people who come there. That’s what makes the city what it is. So I wanted to have multiple languages in the film. 

I also sometimes feel language becomes a barrier for friendship. So friendship between a Marathi lady and a Malayali nurse may not actually be that easy because of the language, so at that point, I resort to Hindi. But it’s also my desire and hope that while having our own languages, we can also form communications and be open to relationships with those who are different from us. 

Why then does the Hindi film industry not reflect the diversity of languages and peoples that are the reality of that city?

Maybe because they want to reach the maximum number of people in north India, and people in the north don’t like subtitles? In Kerala I think people are more open to reading subs, because you have so many different films being made. I watched Nishiddho and there were Malayalam subs for the Hindi part. With my film too, I’m wondering if people in the north will come to watch a film with subtitles. I’m not sure. People don’t read, ya. It’s very sad. I love reading subs, but people don’t. What to do?  

So you approached Kani years back to play Anu. How did Divya end up in that role? 

I saw Divya in Ariyippu (2022), in which she plays a more mature character. So I thought I’ll cast her as the older nurse, Prabha. I called her to Mumbai for an audition-type, and when she came off the train, I saw that she was spunky and full of life, and I was like, no, she’s definitely the younger one, Anu. Then I started checking her Reels and I felt she’d be really right as Anu.

Prabha and Anu are both originally from Kerala, a state that seems extremely progressive to outsiders, and in many ways it is, but it’s also deeply patriarchal and conservative. In your mind, why is Anu so free in contrast with Prabha’s conservatism?

She’s younger, and I did notice some movement happening among the new generation of girls from Kerala, from whatever I follow in the media and what I saw when I spent a lot of time in Ernakulam. You see the youngsters who are going to the cinema, to festivals – there’s a fight towards more progressiveness. The shift may be small, but it’s there. And for me, it’s very hopeful and nice to see. 

Were you aware that Malayalam cinema hardly ever shows sex, or even kissing? Since Divya is from that industry, did you have to make her comfortable with the lovemaking scene?

I was definitely concerned about this. But Divya had read the script, so she knew what was in it. And we talked a lot through it to figure out what she was comfortable with.

But I do think the Kerala industry is changing. I saw Rekha last year, and there’s a lot going on there. (Pauses) But you’re right, it’s still a conservative industry. But we were trying to make the film much more about affection than just sexual. And Divya embodied that well. There’s a lot of affection between them, there’s something cute about the way they’re together. And the point of the film is to normalise these things, to say you want to root for them because they’re cute together. (Laughs)

You had an intimacy coordinator (Naina Bhan). Could you help me understand what she did that a director can’t in making actors comfortable? 

There are exercises and workshoppings that I don’t know of, which intimacy coordinators have learned. She put the actors through those exercises. I also now realise the intimacy coordinator is a barrier between the director and actor to facilitate better communication. 

Barrier or medium?

Somebody who understands both sides. Sometimes directors lose track of things and you want more takes. You might not always realise the actress is not happy with that. As a sensitive director you should, but directors are a bit selfish. An intimacy coordinator keeps these things in check. You go in with a clear plan – it’s like an unsaid contract, that we’ve discussed this so we will only do this much. Such scenes can be mentally taxing and one needs to be sensitive towards actors. I’m trying to get better at this. And I learned a lot thanks to the intimacy coordinator.

(Pauses) It’s also kind of like having a choreographer in a dance where a meticulous action has been choreographed for the camera to express a certain feeling. If I had a dance sequence, I’d get a choreographer. The intimacy coordinator helps with that also. Of course I’ll have something in mind, but she will suggest certain things from her experience, such as other possible angles, because we make one film in four years – intimacy coordinators have much more knowledge. 

We’ve spoken of Prabha versus Anu. Can we also talk about Anu versus Shiaz? (Reminder: Shiaz is Anu’s boyfriend.) 

(She laughs) He’s a paavam. 

But he’s a typical MCP when Anu laughingly talks about a male patient’s spontaneous erection. He’s uncomfortable with the possibility that she’s not a virgin, but perfectly cool with her being free with him. So is he just a paavam, or is he also an asshole? 

No, he is also an asshole. Everybody is slightly an asshole. (We both laugh) 

Every human being or every character here?

Every character. Shiaz has his limitations. We can laugh at him, like Anu does. It would have been toooooooo romantic to say oh, this is the most perfectly sweet guy. At the end of the day he’s an Indian guy so, you know... I mean, not just Indian. It’s universal. Men have these insecurities no matter where you go. (She laughs throughout this answer)

Most conversations in All We Imagine As Light do not happen with us directly watching people speak. Much of the time, we’re hearing them but seeing something else. Either it’s a voiceover or the character has her back to the camera. What are you doing with that choice?

Audiences are intelligent now and you don’t have to always show people talking. It’s a cliched thing to say, but Mumbai is also a character in our film – so now, if viewers hear a conversation over visuals of the city, what kind of image does that create in their minds? I like playing around with these juxtapositions because I feel it leaves more openness in the viewing to make your own meaning, and a feeling that’s not so A+B, but the juxtaposition may cause something else.

Off-screen conversations, using conversations almost as voiceovers – I’ve loved experimenting with these in all my films.

One thing this film has in common with A Night Of Knowing Nothing is its dream-like state. There’s a lot of activity on screen, yet so much stillness. How do you manage to get that?

I’m not really sure. But I like to work with sound, and keeping a movement in the sound which is so subliminal that it affects you, I hope, in a way that you don’t quite understand how it’s affecting you, but you feel overwhelmed. This aspect of cinema is something like music. I get affected by the kind of films in which sound and image work in a way that’s not very direct, but somehow you’re feeling something. Why am I feeling like this? I’m not entirely sure what this director has done, but I’m feeling overwhelmed. So this is my attempt. It’s risky, but the joy of making films is that you can try these things. 

People tend to use the word “politics” to mean BJP, CPIM, Congress, DMK. But that’s not what politics is, at least for me. And I thought All We Imagine As Light is very political.

I agree with your first statement as much as the second. Politics is not just party politics, it’s everyday politics – the politics of gender, class, caste. 

A Night Of Knowing Nothing was overtly, quote-unquote, political. In this one I was trying to see how, through a narrative that’s seemingly just a love story, other questions can also come through.

Why isn’t A Night of Knowing Nothing available in India? 

Where to put it? We didn’t get much offers. 

Is it because of the nature of the content? 

Maybe. It’s an experimental documentary. What OTT will want to show it? 

Don’t international awards generate interest among Indian distributors?

Where? Our people make good films and win awards, but where are the distributors willing to take a chance on them in India? Where is Pedro? Anamika Haksar’s Ghode Ko Jalebi Khilane Le Ja Riya Hoon was at so many festivals, but it took her two years to get Platoon on board to distribute it, and Platoon worked hard to ensure that it came out. So the struggle in India is not just to find funding to make films, we need support for distribution too. 

We need state support in the form of tax cuts for independent films, not just films they think are, quote-unquote, socially relevant, and incentives for distribution. Earlier there were government-supported screening spaces across India. Now we don’t have that either, apart from in Kerala and maybe some other states. We need a structure in place to support filmmakers. Like in France, for a certain kind of film, the government gives small grants to distributors to do publicity.

How likely is government support for political films? In A Night of Knowing Nothing, you even mentioned Modi who’s been He Who Shall Not Be Named for the longest time in many spaces in India. Pedro was not screened at the Bangalore festival, and a BJP guy openly said the content of the film was the reason. 

That’s why we need independent committees. It’s a utopian idea. Every government has tried to interfere in committees over which they had rights, but what else is there? Will I ask Ambani for money? We need structural support and autonomous bodies deciding. Like we used to have in the Films Division, where you could apply for funding for films that were more critical of the government also long back, or a PSBT grant. There were committees. Independent committees that are representative of different castes, gender and so on, would be ideal.

Even for MIFF and IFFI, there used to be selection committees consisting of artists and filmmakers. Previously, representation was an issue. Now it’s that uncritical films must be selected. It’s a sad situation.

Coming back to All We Imagine As Light, there’s much more to the religious procession in India now than there was earlier. What did you have in mind when you included a Ganesh Chaturthi scene in this film?

My relationship with Ganesh Chaturthi is complicated, just as what it stands for is complicated.

One’s questions come out clearly in one’s work, which is why you see that I’ve placed a voiceover about being unhappy with the city over visuals of the festival. I hoped to bring out my apprehensions and the contradictions in the way I look at it, because the voiceover is talking about how it’s really difficult to live in Mumbai though you want to call it the city of dreams, but city of dreams just means you have to shut up and not complain, not protest. And that’s pretty much what Bombay has become. 

There is only one particular maidan where you can protest. This used to be a city of unions in the 1980s, a city of protest. All that has now been erased and gentrified. So the only time people can go out in crowds and claim the streets is through a religious procession. Protests do happen, but not in the way Mumbai used to be. Even colleges are no longer allowed to have unions. A very clear change took place after the ’80s to make Mumbai the way it is. You will see a huge difference between Delhi and Bombay, the apathy in Bombay, (she starts mimicking a Mumbai English accent) the “I don’t think about politics” thing. 

Bombay was not always like this. Money has caused it to consciously become like this. And for me that’s really frustrating. This was one of the things I wanted to bring out in the film, and I felt I could do that through the juxtaposition with the Ganpati festival, which is also a place where a lot of people come out and have a good time. Who am I to say anything about that? 

Even in my previous film I had the Dussehra festival where also the questions were complicated at that point in the film. So it’s about the multiplicity of things in our lives and the contradictions in the times that we’re living in.

In Indian cinema across languages, when women write films giving centrality to women, you always find wonderfully written male characters. Like Manoj and Shiaz in All We Imagine As Light. But too many male writers don’t automatically, organically write solid women characters in men-centric scripts. 

Unfortunately, this is a worldwide reality. At Cannes, male journalists asked me questions like, “Why did you make a film that has only women in it and about women’s friendship?” I was like, “You don’t ask Guy Ritchie why he made a movie with only men fighting for diamonds. Why are you asking me?” People think it’s so unique to make a film with women in it. I’m like, no, it should be the norm. 

If there are many women in the film, it’s described as being about female friendship. If there are many men in the film though, it’s like, oh, this is how it is. It’s really messed up.

Even if they make an all-female Hollywood film, it feels like they’ve done it to counter the narrative going around now, that there are all these male-centric films. It will be good to have more female and LGBTQ directors, and different perspectives coming out, because ultimately it’s the director’s politics that is the centre of the film. So if we have more diversity among the makers, whether it’s technicians, the direction team or writers, we will automatically get representation that’s not just for the sake of representation, but is happening because that’s what the makers know. 

(Note: I asked Payal the next set of questions in June. She has since joined Twitter.)

You didn’t easily give interviews at Cannes, and yesterday you told me you don’t like being hugged by random people. (She laughs) You are not the best person to be a celebrity.

No, I want to hide in my blanket.

So how will you handle the attention? Because irrespective of what happens going forward, your life has changed forever.

You think people will remember or what? There are so many interesting things happening. Let’s wait for the next film to win at another festival. It’ll happen soon. Then they’ll forget about me. (She laughs)

That’s wishful thinking.

(We both laugh) I just think that in India, I hope, Cannes is not that well-known…I think.

Cannes is not well-known?!

No, I mean to like 80 percent of the population.

Well, by that yardstick, no one is known to everyone. When Tom Cruise came to India, it was reported that people were paid to pretend to be fans and gather at the airport. 

Oh no! That’s sad and pathetic.

So your fame depends on which sphere you are moving around in. 

All this is totally new for me. I’m not even on social media. So much about my views and my personal life is out there. Somebody made a fake Twitter account so… It’s freaking me out a bit. (We’re laughing throughout this part of the interview)

(Note: I asked Payal these follow-up questions in October.)

When we spoke in June you said you’d rather hide under a blanket than be in the spotlight. You weren’t comfortable giving interviews, but now you’re giving a lot of interviews. Have you changed? 

I realised that for a film like this, it’s important that people connect to something that motivates them to go watch it. Talking about it in the press could be one way. 

So have you had to overcome a lot of shyness for this (she starts laughing) or have you changed over the course of this very solid PR push for the film? 

Actually, before this PR push, I did the same thing in France where the film released in October, and in the US where it released on November 15, so I’ve become more trained. Not trained in a bad way, but after doing so many media interactions, I’ve become…less inhibited.

Now are you enjoying being in the spotlight and giving interviews?

I don’t like being in the spotlight, but because film journalists watch so many films, I love seeing how journalists from different places respond to the film. 

In the six months since Cannes, what have you learned about yourself?

Maybe I’m not that shy after all! (We laugh.)

Actually, each stage in making a film has a different temperament. When you’re writing, you’re alone – you may interview some people, that’s it. During pre-production, you start meeting people like actors. While shooting there’s a lot of interaction and talking and being present and extroverted. Then for the editing and sound work, you’re locked inside a room for months. Again I go into myself at that point. Then cut to promotions. (She starts laughing) In going from one to the other, life goes faster than you’re able to acclimatise.

So at that point I was feeling a bit like, aaargh, I don’t know how I’ll promote this film. But now I’m quite enjoying the process and I’m really excited to see that some people will go buy tickets to watch my movie. That’s bringing me a lot of joy.

Anna MM Vetticad is an award-winning journalist and author of The Adventures of an Intrepid Film Critic. She specialises in the intersection of cinema with feminist and other socio-political concerns. You can reach her on Twitter: @annavetticad, Instagram: @annammvetticad, and Facebook: AnnaMMVetticadOfficial.

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