Some movies touch your heart but you can’t quite put your finger on why. It’s not something concrete like a particular character or a certain plot development. It’s not the score or the setting. It’s the film’s light.
Not the physical phenomenon caught by the cinematographer. No, it’s what the light symbolizes: enlightenment, connection, understanding. The kind of light that illuminates friendships and the little meaningful moments of life. The kind of light that can trigger a transformation.
All We Imagine as Light starts out in Mumbai, a bustling big city packed with people. Prabha (Kani Kusruti) and Anu (Divya Prabha) are nurses in a city hospital. Their friend Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam) is a cook there. All three women are facing challenges.
Prabha is a diligent worker, rather shy, who keeps to herself and doesn’t go out with the other women. She’s quiet and lonely. She’s married but her husband went away to Germany a year ago and just sends her an occasional gift.
Anu is younger, outgoing, flirtatious, and in love with a Muslim boy, Shiaz (Hridhu Haroom). Since she’s Hindu, they have to keep their relationship secret, even from her roommate Prabha.
Parvaty is a widow who is being evicted from her home of many years because she doesn’t have the proper papers. Frustrated with the system and city life, she decides to move back to her village on the beach. Prabha and Anu go along to help get her house set up.
Outside of the glare of the city lights, all three women begin to see the world differently. Anu and Shiaz find a way to freely express their love. Prabha has some good memories of her husband. Parvaty realizes that the seaside is where she belongs.
This is a portrait of sisterhood that unfolds slowly, as the light of a day gradually illuminates the beauty of their surroundings. Friendship is imagined as light. Love is imagined as light. The future is imagined as light.