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Director – Payal Kapadia – 2024 – France, India, Luxembourg, Netherlands – Cert. 15 – 118m

*****

The lives, loves and challenges of three women working in a hospital in Mumbai – on UK Blu-ray/DVD (Dual Format Edition) from Monday, March 3rd, on BFI Player from Monday, February 17th, and on iTunes and Amazon Prime from Monday, March 17th

Mumbai. Opening with serial, engrossing tracking shots showing first men working throwing goods onto lorries, then men in traffic riding in the open boot of a car, then people riding on the urban rail system, all to the accompaniment of soundtrack vox pops of men and women talking about their lives and how the city helps you forget, All We Imagine as Light is, among other things, a paean to the city of Mumbai.

On a typical working day in the hospital, Nurse Prabha (Kani Kusruti from Girls Will Be Girls, Shuchi Talati, 2024) explains to a doctor why an old lady refuses to take her pills (she’s seeing visions of the torso of her late husband) and opts out of going out to see the latest action blockbuster featuring dreamy male stars with her fellow nurses. She talks about helping with free legal advice to kitchen worker Pavarty (Chhaya Kadam from Sister Midnight, Karan Kandhari, 2024; Laapataa Ladies, Kiran Rao, 2023; Bombay Rose, Gitanjali Rao, 2019) who is having problems with intimidation by thugs to move out of her home.… Read the rest

Hot In Day,
Cold At Night
(Naj-eneun Ddeobgo
Bam-eneun Chubgo,
낮에는 덥고 밤에는 춥고)

Director – Park Song-yeol – 2020 – South Korea – Cert. 12 – 90m

A young, unemployed, married Seoul couple struggle to make ends meet – from LKFF, the London Korean Film Festival which runs in cinemas from Thursday, November 3rd to Thursday, November 17th

Married Seoul couple Young-tae and Jeong-hee (played by screenwriters Park Song-yeol and Won Hyung-ra) are in financial trouble. Neither of them has a secure job with a regular income. They aren’t the only ones: he lends his mate Myung-su the family camera for a week so the latter can do some professional wedding photography to earn some money. If this sounds a bit odd, it sounds odder still when Young-tae finds his calls blocked and can’t get the camera back.

Desperate for money, Young-tae goes for interviews and, after a row with an old friend who purports to be setting up a business but turns out trying to recruit him for a network marketing operation, which Young-tae dismisses as a pyramid scheme, he eventually picks up a job as a cabbie where one night he gets into a row with a customer over taking a quicker, toll road rather than a slower, free road and loses his deposit with the company.… Read the rest