When Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda was a member of the jury at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, the movie in the Competition lineup that impressed him the most was Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine as Light, which went on to win the Grand Prix. “I signed a contract saying I wouldn’t divulge who voted for what and the overall selection process,” he said during his TIFF Lounge conversation with Kapadia on October 29 at the 37th Tokyo International Film Festival. “But when I was asked which director I most wanted to have at the TIFF Lounge, she was the first person who came to mind.”
 
Kapadia, one of India’s most celebrated independent directors right now, recalled traveling to Cannes with a large group. “My student film, a documentary, was shown at Cannes in the Directors Fortnight section,” she said. “But this year was the first time I saw Cannes in all its glory. We didn’t expect All We Imagine as Light to be selected for the Competition, and as I had worked on it for many years, all this fuss was something new to me. I was very nervous, but fortunately I had my whole retinue with me, including my main actors, so it was a nice feeling.”
 
Kore-eda commented on the solidarity of her crew and noted that she and her cinematographer went to school together. Kapadia explained that she had attended the Film and Television Institute of India, and that her cinematographer was actually ahead of her. “At that school, you had to stick with the people in your own class,” she said with a laugh. “So it was only through work that we mingled. We filmed [All We Imagine as Light] for two years together, and it was a very collaborative experience. The same went for the cast.”
 
Prompted about the film education system in India, Kapadia attempted to explain its ecology. “Some film schools are run by individual states, but the one I went to is the only national one, and they only accept 10 people a year. And, you know, India has a lot of people.” When Kore-eda asked her what kind of background she had in film studies to get into the school under such circumstances, Kapadia seemed slightly embarrassed.
 
Her mother was a painter and video artist, she said, so she had a lot of exposure to the arts while growing up. “Some of her friends were documentary filmmakers, so I saw those films from a young age, but I didn’t necessarily want to do that. It wasn’t until I went to university and attended film festivals that I really got into it.”
 
Surprisingly, what hooked her were student experimental films that didn’t rely on narratives. “They were very free, and I thought that was interesting, so I applied to film school but was rejected.” She then worked for five years as an assistant director (“which was miserable”), and did a stint in advertising before applying again and getting in. Interestingly, the national film school in India was modeled on a Soviet counterpart, so she was exposed to a lot of Soviet-era films as well as Czech New Wave.
 
This intrigued Kore-eda, because, by his own ission, he held certain prejudices about Indian filmmaking and wondered how graduates went from such a free and experimental atmosphere into something as formulaic as Bollywood, which is still the dominant film style in India. “It’s difficult to sustain a career with independent movies in India,” said Kapadia, “so most people have to go into mainstream films. There’s no system for indie films, and people have to earn money, so they start working in Bollywood,” which she was quick to point out is not monolithic. India is a jigsaw puzzle of languages, religions, and regional manners, she noted, but Indians share a fondness for the kind of big-budget spectacle that Bollywood represents.

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