By Jason Osiason

All We Imagine as Light unfolds around three women in Mumbai, a nurse, her roommate, and a younger colleague, whose lives intertwine as they navigate love, friendship, and the everyday struggles of city living. At times it plays like India’s answer to Sex and the City, but stripped of gloss and consumer fantasy. What remains is something more grounded: shared meals in cramped apartments, late night confidences, the quiet push against patriarchal norms, and the search for small freedoms.

The film drifts in its rhythm, often favoring mood over plot, which some might see as aimlessness. Yet that looseness mirrors the characters’ own uncertain trajectories and becomes part of its charm. Payal Kapadia captures the textures of ordinary life with unforced intimacy, creating a portrait of urban womanhood that feels lived in rather than staged. Mumbai itself is not just backdrop but atmosphere, felt in the crowded trains, the dim apartments, and the half lit streets. It is a city that presses down on the women while also offering the possibility of connection.

If the narrative occasionally wanders, it does so in service of something more truthful, the way life rarely moves in neat arcs. That refusal to impose artificial drama makes the film resonate with quiet power. It lingers not in dramatic events but in small gestures, solidarity, longing, and fleeting joy. By the end, the women’s bond feels less like a plot point than an emotional truth, one that stays with you long after the film fades. [B+]