Cannes 2024: Payal Kapadia's All We Imagine As Light Gets 8-Minute Standing Ovation

The eight-minute standing ovation at the end of the film's screening was definitely among the longest of this edition of the film festival

Payal Kapadia and the cast of her film, All We Imagine As Light, made a fashion splash and left quite an impression on international critics - at its world premiere at Cannes on Thursday night. All We Imagine...' is the first Indian movie in 30 years to qualify for the festival's competition section, which makes Kapadia a contender for the prestigious Palme d'Or. The eight-minute standing ovation at the end of the film's screening was definitely among the longest of this edition of the film festival.

Payal Kapadia is in competition with "European heavyweights such as Jacques Audiard and Yorgos Lanthimos, American auteurs David Cronenberg and Paul Schrader, and Asian visionary Jia Zhangke", as IndieWire reminds us.

Whether the film gets the trophy or not, it did leave international critics impressed after the screening, with Peter Bradshaw of 'The Guardian' showering praise on it for its "freshness and emotional clarity" and comparing Kapadia's "fluent and absorbing" storytelling with Satyajit Ray's in his classics, Mahanagar and Aranyer Din Ratri.