Payal Kapadia and the cast of her film, 'All We Imagine As Light', made a fashion splash -- and left quite an impression on international critics -- at its world premiere at Cannes on Thursday night. 'All We Imagine..
.' is the first Indian movie in 30 years to qualify for the festival's competition section, which makes Kapadia a contender for the prestigious Palme d'Or. The eight-minute standing ovation at the end of the film's screening was definitely among the longest of this edition of the film festival.
Kapadia is in competition with "European heavyweights such as Jacques Audiard and Yorgos Lanthimos, American auteurs David Cronenberg and Paul Schrader, and Asian visionary Jia Zhangke", as 'IndieWire' reminds us. Whether the film gets the trophy or not, it did leave international critics impressed after the screening, with Peter Bradshaw of 'The Guardian' showering praise on it for its "freshness and emotional clarity" and comparing Kapadia's "fluent and absorbing" storytelling with Satyajit Ray's in his classics, 'Mahanagar' and 'Aranyer Din Ratri'. Before the screening, the internationally funded film's star cast adorned the red carpet on the steps of the Palais du Festival, with Kani Kusruti standing out with her watermelon clutch (the green and red clutch was literally designed like a cut section of the fruit!); Divya Prabha looking a world apart from her character in the film in her classy copper-hued gown; and Hridu Haroon appearing in a veshti and long embellished .
