Kani Kusruti was below the climate, bracing for one other work journey to Kerala when the information broke. Her forthcoming movie, Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine as Light, had been selected in competition at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. It’s the primary time in 30 years that an Indian movie will probably be vying for the distinguished Palme d’Or.
The slate contains the illustrious likes of Francis Ford Coppola’s Megapolis, Yorgos Lanthimos’ Kinds of Kindness, Andrea Arnold’s Bird, Jia Zhang-Ke’s Caught By the Tides amongst others. American filmmaker Greta Gerwig is presiding over the principle jury for the 77th Cannes, set to take place from May 14 to 25 on the French Riviera.
Another Indian movie, Santosh, by British-Indian director Sandhya Suri, will compete in the Un Certain Regard sidebar.
“I was at home in Goa, where I currently live, when the messages started pouring in,” Kani says. “I was busy packing for a shoot in Kerala, and a little tired and sick, or else I would’ve responded to each text.”
All We Imagine…’s selection marks a giant event for Indian cinema. The nation has, in current years, risen in profile and visibility at Cannes. Yet, regardless of movies like Masaan and All That Breathes bringing residence prime honours, we now have hardly ever basked in most important competitors glory. The solely Indian movie to ever win the Palme d’Or — then recognized as Grand Prix du Festival International du Film — is Chetan Anand’s Neecha Nagar (1946). Satyajit Ray and Mrinal Sen’s movies had been fitfully nominated, with Sen’s 1982 home assist drama Kharij successful the Jury Prize. In 1994, Malayalam director Shaji N Karun’s rural-set traditional Swaham was the final movie from India to compete for the Palme d’Or.
Serendipitously, All We Imagine as Light is the story of two Kerala nurses working in Mumbai, and each its leads, Kani and Ariyippu actor Divya Prabha, are Malayalis. In all, it has been an ecstatic few weeks for Kerala movie followers, with the tidings from Cannes and films like Manjummel Boys, Aadujeevitham and Aavesham breaking out vast.
Kani Kusruti
“I feel the more regional the treatment of a film is, the more it speaks an international language,” observes Kani, who remembers watching Swaham in a theatre as a toddler. “My parents were serious film buffs and they had taken me to its screening. Years later, I worked with Shaji sir in Oolu (2018).”
In All We Imagine as Light, Kani performs Prabha, the pinnacle nurse at a Mumbai hospital. She rooms with Anu, one other nurse, who’s youthful. Prabha is estranged from her husband, whereas Anu is in search of privateness in the massive metropolis along with her boyfriend. “One day, the two nurses go on a road trip to a beach town where the mystical forest becomes a space for their dreams to manifest,” reads a plotline. Marathi actor Chhaya Kadam performs a pivotal function in the movie.
Kapadia’s earlier characteristic, the documentary A Night of Knowing Nothing (2021), received the Golden Eye at Cannes. Before that, her pupil brief, Afternoon Clouds (2017), additionally concerning the shared vulnerabilities and sophisticated interior worlds of two girls in a home, was chosen in the cinéfondation class on the fest.
Kani says she was initially approached by Kapadia to play the youthful nurse. But the undertaking took years to get off the bottom, and he or she winded up with the function of Prabha.
“Prabha is not someone I relate to,” Kani states. “She is someone who carries a lot of baggage due to social expectations. Although she has found economic independence, her conscience is torn between her desires and what others want her to do.” Aspects of the character, she provides, had been drawn from an actual individual. “Payal told me that she had met someone — a nurse — that triggered some questions in her and inspired her to write this film. We also workshopped with working nurses to get an understanding of their lives.”
Kani Kusruti
The first half of All We Imagine as Light was filmed throughout the monsoons in Mumbai final yr. The forged and crew camped out in a non-functioning hospital in Dahisar, in the northern suburbs. “We were shooting in really congested places with sync sound. We could not start the fan or open a window.” The second, extra liberated half of the movie was shot in Ratnagiri, a port city on the Konkan coast. “It was hot and dry but much calmer.”
Kani is a rockstar on the Indian indie circuit. Her 2020 Malayalam movie Biriyaani received a number of awards; extra not too long ago, her film Girls Will Be Girls premiered at Sundance. She has an equally prolific streaming profession; this yr alone, she has featured in high-profile reveals like Killer Soup, Poacher and Maharani Season 3. So it’s a shock when she admits that, circumstances allowing, she avoids attending jazzy pageant premieres or crimson carpets. “I get easily overwhelmed in crowds,” she laughs. “It’s just my personality… I’m not very outgoing.”
Will she attend Cannes, although? “I am shooting on those days. If it’s possible, I will go. I understand it’s a humongous deal, India competing at Cannes and all that. But more than anything, I would want to watch this film with the entire cast and crew that worked on it. The joy of creating something special together is still alive.”