Transgressions—this is what draws me to Payal Kapadia’s work. Her first film, A Night of Knowing Nothing (2021), bends form and categories, darting between fiction and non-fiction almost promiscuously. It resides in the land of wickedness—a narrow strip between the boundaries of fiction and non-fiction—distancing its audience from objective truth while drawing them closer to another reality. Perhaps an imagined one, or the one we can feel subdermally. Several filmmakers explore and enrich this land, notably Jean Rouch, Chris Marker, Jon Bang, Sarah Polley, and Miguel Gomes. Kapadia’s latest film All We Imagine As Light inhabits a reality that city-dwellers are painfully aware of: loneliness, longing, and alienation while surrounded by milling masses and negotiating unsaid desires in a megacity with little space to yield to lovers. Kapadia’s work resonates with me because it is urgent and about Mumbai, my homeland and reality that I try hard to comprehend   In…

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