Payal Kapadia's 'All We Imagine As Light' loses Best Film Not in English Language BAFTA to 'Emilia Perez'

Payal Kapadia’s critically acclaimed movie “All We Imagine As Light” lost the BAFTA in the Best Film Not in the English Language category to French title “Emilia Perez”.

Despite controversy surrounding its lead star Karla Sofia Gascon’s old tweets, which were viewed as Islamophobic and racist, “Emilia Perez” won the award at Sunday’s ceremony in London with film’s second lead Zoe Saldana taking home the BAFTA in the Supporting Actress segment.

“Emilia Perez”, a French film directed by Jacques Audiard, follows four remarkable women in Mexico, each pursuing their own happiness. Cartel leader Emilia (Gascon) enlists Rita (Saldana), an unappreciated lawyer, to help fake her death so that she can fake her death so that she can finally live authentically as her true self.

In an exclusive interview with Firstpost, the director of this gem, Payal Kapadia, poured her heart out and spoke about the city of Mumbai, the challenges of making independent cinema, the characters she has written for this film, and what we can expect next from her as a director.

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She said, “I’m from Mumbai, and I think it’s a city that I know best. That’s why I felt comfortable talking about it. And, I think that it’s a city which has a lot of contradictions. And one of them I felt strongly about is that it gives us as women a lot of opportunities, and it’s a little bit easier to work. And there’s a kind of professionalism that I think still there’s a long way to go. But compared to a lot of other places in our country, Mumbai is a little bit easier for women to think about working in."

Payal added, “But it’s also a very cruel and expensive city. It’s very hard to be able to live more tense, mate. Like, it’s just, you’re working to live and living to work, and it’s difficult. It’s not an easy city infrastructurally going every day to work and there’s all these complexities or even having a place to stay. So it’s these kinds of contradictions that I have a love-hate relationship with Mumbai, and, I felt that I wanted to document this city because it’s also a city that’s always in a state of flux. Whether it’s people coming and going or the actual shape of our city has changed now."

With added inputs from agencies