Hirokazu Koreeda confessed that he had wanted to speak in depth with Indian director Payal Kapadia ever since he saw her film Everything we imagine as light at the Cannes Film Festival this year. On Tuesday, the Japanese auteur finally got his chance to participate in the intimate TIFF Lounge talk series held during the Tokyo Internation Film Festival at the luxurious Lexus Café.
Everything we imagine as light is Kapadia's second feature film following his 2021 debut, the documentary A night without knowing anything. His second feature film received great international critical acclaim and was the first Indian film to compete in the Cannes main competition in 30 years. The film eventually won the French festival's Grand Prix, the second most prestigious prize. In recent weeks, Everything we imagine as light made headlines again, as it was widely expected that the film would be India's submission to the 2025 Academy Awards in the Best International Film category. In a shocking turn of events, Kiran Rao Lord Laapataa was chosen by the Film Federation of India, and the selection caused a fierce reaction in the country.
Koreeda was a member of the main jury of the Cannes competition this year, and he began Tuesday's speech by admitting that due to a strict NDA he cannot reveal the judges' deliberations, or how he voted. But he wryly confessed that ever since Cannes he had been looking forward to talking to Kapadia and learning more about his work and process. The following is an edited transcript of the conversation between Koreeda and Kapadia, as well as a selection of questions and answers from the audience.
KOREED: How was Cannes for you?
KAPADIA: We didn't expect the film to be in competition. It was a film I had been making for many years and, [and the feeling of being in Cannes] it was very new to me. It was just nice to have the movie [in competition] with so many directors I looked up to in film school. These are the directors I have [studied] me, and there were the members of the jury, and others, [who we studied at] film school. I have to admit that I was very nervous. But I had all my crew with me and everyone was from India, even my actresses had come. When everyone is together, you feel a little better. That's why it was a good feeling.
“Everything we imagine as light”
Cannes Film Festival
KOREEDA: In your own words, could you tell us what? Everything we imagine as light is it?
KAPADIA: The film is about two women who come from the southern state of Kerala and live and work in Mumbai. They are roommates, but I wouldn't really call them friends, you know, because sometimes you become roommates by chance, the one who wants his story and then someone comes and stays. So it's like a casual friendship between two people who are from slightly different generations. There is Prabha who is almost 40 years old, then there is Anu who is in her mid-twenties. The film is about each of them finding themselves in impossible love situations, not with each other, but with two different people. And it's kind of a movie about friendship and finding your kind of family. In India the family is a complicated entity. It's something [that can be] also supportive, but sometimes it can also bring you down. And so the film is about the family that is created when you go away from your family.
KOREEDA: When you presented the film at Cannes, I loved it. The situation of the characters is quite serious, the way you tell the story is calm and not too loud. In a way, you show your sympathy for the characters, and in the competition at Cannes, that really stood out. There were a lot of very loud films. Your film has the strongest power to convey your message. In all three of your films, the characters' voices and sounds are very important.
KAPADIA: Sound for me is how films affect me very physically. We don't need to be very loud [in films]…I like [give that] feeling like someone is talking in your ear, sitting next to you in a gentle way, not far away from you. And that's what I like about films: you can have a long, very wide shot, but the voice can still be intimate, and in cinema we can do that. Which is something I really like in films, because voices can create intimacy even in a large shot and can bring you very close to the characters, even if we are very far away. Sometimes I think I don't want to get too physically close to the characters, I find myself being a little far away. But with the voice, I don't have this feeling, I want to be close, listen and be very kind [with the talking]. And I think that's something we can do in film and it's the fun, it's the joy of making films that we have these choices – I really like that.
“Everything we imagine as light”
Small chaos
KOREEDA: I feel like your films have a strong philosophy behind them, could you talk about that?
KAPADIA: I like to make films that aren't very big… because I think everyday life is full of drama, we don't need to look outward too much. [These are the] the kind of stories I like. When we were students in film school, we were reading some Japanese short stories by Yasunari Kawabata. One of my teachers introduced us to this story called Stories in the palm of your hand from Kawabata, which were only one-page stories. And I really like the way he wrote it. It was so deceptively simple, as if it were everyday, but it contained so many things that were covered in just 3-4 paragraphs and ranged from history, to past dreams, to reality, to anxieties, to happiness. I felt very liberated reading those short stories, thinking that in reality we can talk about many things with very little. This process [is] very painful [way for] my teacher introduced me to works like this that are, again, deceptively simple, but there are many layers that the juxtaposition creates. I don't know if this answers your question, but that's how I like to think about things.
Audience Question: Many predicted that your film would be India's entry for the Oscars this year. And if he had been selected, I think there was a very good chance he would have been nominated. So I'm wondering: what do you think about why the film wasn't selected?
KAPADIA: Thanks for the question. I think a lot has already been achieved with this film. I am very satisfied with how the journey of the film went. And it was truly more than I expected. So everything that comes is like a bonus for me.
“A night without knowing anything”
Courtesy of TIFF
Audience question: When I saw the film, the only thing that excited the audience [confused] and I was so confused because there are so many languages in the movie, but you couldn't tell because we don't know all the different languages. I felt it when the film was shown that some of [languages] they were color coded. How many languages were there?
KAPADIA: India is a country that has, I don't know, 26 official languages or 20 or something. Everyone speaks a different language. We are a very multilingual country and Mumbai is a city where you will hear many languages. So it's part of our culture that we don't speak each other's language and therefore we all have to speak another language in order to understand each other. And this is an experience of Mumbai that I had, and I felt the need to talk about the city with its multilingual quality. I like the linguistic diversity of our country and the desire to succeed [one language] It doesn't work at all for me. So, even in the film, I wanted to have multiple languages to be authentic towards that diversity. [We have] Malay, Hindi, Marathi as the main languages, but they are also there at the beginning when you will hear the voices of the documentaries, they are in Gujarati… If you travel by train in Mumbai, you will hear all these languages.
I'm very interested in the relationship I have with languages because it can be something that if you move to a big city and you don't speak the language, it adds to that feeling of distance, the feeling of being alienated in conversations and the also the film was about This. So a sort of distance is created between all the characters in the film who don't speak Hindi, [a feeling of] do not be connected to the place. But language is also a way that we can create privacy where I guess you and I can speak the language and we're in a public space and so we can say the most intimate thing and no one will understand.
But there is also the question of the cities and the language that I love. So, with all my friends, I know many languages. I just need to find a better way to caption. I'm getting it.
The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.