Who is Payal Kapadia? Meet the award-winning director once booked by Pune Police
Payal Kapadia scripted history by becoming the first filmmaker from India to be nominated for Best Director at the Golden Globes. All We Imagine As Light is her first feature film, which stars Kani Kusruti, Divya Prabha, Chhaya Kadam, and Hridhu Haroon.
Indian cinema is back in the spotlight after All We Imagine As Light, directed by Payal Kapadia, scored two nominations at the Golden Globe Awards 2025.
The movie, which won the Grand Prix award at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, has been nominated for Best International Feature. Meanwhile, Payal Kapadia has been nominated under the Best Director category, alongside Sean Baker for Anora, Edward Berger for Conclave, and Brady Corbert for The Brutalist, among others.
Kapadia scripted history by becoming the first filmmaker from India to be nominated for Best Director at the Golden Globes. All We Imagine As Light is her first feature film, which stars Kani Kusruti, Divya Prabha, Chhaya Kadam, and Hridhu Haroon.
All We Imagine as Light, a Malayalam-Hindi feature, is about Prabha, a nurse, who receives an unexpected gift from her long-estranged husband that throws her life into disarray.
Who is Payal Kapadia?
Payal Kapadia studied film direction at the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) from 2015 to 2018.
She first came into the news for protesting against the appointment of actor-turned-politician Gajendra Chauhan's appointment as the chairman of FTII. She was among many students who staged one of the longest protests in FTII’s history by boycotting classes and all other academic activities for 139 days.
She was among 35 students who were booked by Pune Police and was charged with wrongful confinement of the then FTII director Prashant Pathrabe and for rioting.
FTII had suspended her scholarship but later supported her by bearing travel expenses as she travelled to Cannes in 2017.
Kapadia made it to the Cannes twice before.
In 2017, her 13-minute film, Afternoon Clouds, made its way to the Cinefondation category. The section that was open to film schools across the world saw over 2,600 submissions. This is the first time an FTII film was been picked up in the Cinefondation category. Afternoon Clouds was shot as a dialogue exercise, in which students explore the use of the spoken word in cinema.
She won the Golden Eye award for Best Documentary at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival for her documentary ‘A Night of Knowing Nothing’.
All We Imagine As Light was recently named the best international film by the New York Film Critics Circle award as well as the Gotham Awards. It was also selected as the best film of the year by the prestigious Sight and Sound magazine.