ASMA KHALID, HOST:
American films tend to dominate the Golden Globes, but an interesting name showed up on this year's list of best director nominees, Payal Kapadia. She directed the Indian film "All We Imagine As Light." Now, if you think Indian cinema, you probably think Bollywood, with its bright colors and lively dance performances. Well, this isn't that. Kapadia's film is quiet, intimate. It's about three women, co-workers at a hospital, who are all grappling with the drama of living in one of India's busiest cities, Mumbai. In this scene, Parvaty, the cook at the hospital, is telling Prabha, a nurse, about how redevelopers are trying to force her out of her home.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT")
CHHAYA KADAM: (As Parvaty, non-English language spoken).
KHALID: She's saying here that they think that by building their towers taller and taller, one day they can replace God. "All We Imagine As Light" feels like a portrait of Mumbai itself. Payal Kapadia has made the city and its many issues almost like another character in the film.
PAYAL KAPADIA: For me, the city is full of contradictions. It is a city where for women it's a little bit more safe to work and live in Mumbai compared to some other parts of the country. But it's also a very difficult and complicated city, and it's really expensive, and it's not always very easy life. So I wanted to have both these aspects of Mumbai in the film because I love it, and I hate it also.
(SOUNDBITE OF THUNDER AND RAIN)
KHALID: So it's constantly raining during some of those early scenes. I presume you set this during monsoon season for a reason.
KAPADIA: OK, so there are only two seasons in Mumbai. There is the monsoon, and then it's hot through the year. So, I mean, it's a very particular time. It can get quite hot and sticky, and it rains, like torrential rain, for two, three days continuously. So I felt that the first half of the film has the characters kind of being very stuck in a situation, and I felt that the monsoon heat and that sticky, sweaty feeling of the skin, kind of uncomfortable, was also part of that.
KHALID: The youngest main character in this film is a woman by the name of Anu. She's Hindu, and we see her throughout the film falling in love with a guy in Mumbai who's Muslim.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT")
DIVYA PRABHA: (As Anu, non-English language spoken).
KHALID: Here, Anu is asking why her parents don't understand what she wants. Her boyfriend wonders if they can talk them into accepting the relationship, and Anu says, if I tell them, they'll never let me see you again.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT")
DIVYA PRABHA: (As Anu, non-English language spoken).
KHALID: You're depicting this at a time when religious polarization in India has become quite a force. What did you want us to see in their relationship?
KAPADIA: I didn't want to reduce anybody to their immediate identity, because that's what I am against anyway. And that is the problem of this political discourse, that it reduces people to their immediate identity, when actually people are so much more than that. And for me, also, I wanted to represent this couple as any couple, as a sweet, loving couple that we all root for. And they have their own complications in their relationship, and so they're just kind of young and having a good time and trying their best to find a place where they can be alone in this city, which is also so expensive. You know, love is a very political thing. Unfortunately, that is the case. So I wanted to show, like, a very normal kind of relationship can seem also very political because of the scenario that we are in.
KHALID: This film also feels like a story about female friendships. The three central characters are women of different ages. What were you trying to depict about female friendships?
KAPADIA: I really like the idea of making a film about friendship because, like, family relationships are very heavily coded. Like, mother, father, what all these things mean are so heavily coded in our country. But friendship is still something that has not been, you know, explored that much as a relationship. It's still open. And I think in big cities, friendship becomes a big thing because it's like our chosen family.
KHALID: Two characters, Anu and Prabha, fall into a somewhat more stereotypical mother-daughter relationship or older-sister-younger-sister dynamic. Was that intentional to show them kind of struggle for a, quote, "normal" female friendship?
KAPADIA: Yeah. Definitely, that is something that I was trying to define for myself as the film progressed. It's a very city kind of relationship because Prabha is kind of her boss, and she probably needed a roommate, which often happens in Mumbai. You get a roommate because you need to get that extra rent. And then it's a wild card. You could get anybody, which I think happens to a lot of people in big cities (laughter). So she's kind of tried to - like, they are both tiptoeing around each other, in the beginning at least. That relationship progresses. As it does, there is some amount of envy from Prabha's side, where she cannot understand how Anu can just be OK with being herself, so - where Prabha herself is so caught up in her morality that she really can't be her true self. So that's where the kind of resentment comes out in terms of anger, which I think that it's happened to me also sometimes, because in our cultures we're so conditioned to be sort of critical of each other more than we are of men, I think. This was something I wanted to address for myself also because I feel like I'm also trying to be better as a friend for other people.
(SOUNDBITE OF TOPSHE'S "IMAGINED LIGHT")
KHALID: The film is called "All We Imagine As Light." Payal Kapadia is the writer and director. She's nominated for best director at the Golden Globes, and she's already won the Grand Prix award at the Cannes Film Festival. But her movie won't be up for an Oscar in the international feature film category. That's because India chose not to nominate it. The president of the Indian Film Federation said the judges didn't feel it was Indian enough and described it like watching a European film take place in India. I asked Payal Kapadia for one final thought about that.
KAPADIA: I think it's very strange because I don't know what is Indian (laughter). There is not one Indian. There are so many different things in India, and we are such a diverse country, so I'd really like to meet him and ask him what is this Indian-ness he's talking about?
KHALID: The Golden Globes will be handed out January 5. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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