The Grand Prix winner at Cannes, Payal Kapadia’s remarkable film finds poetry and profundity in the everyday, creating magic from a tale of two nurses navigating life in a teeming Mumbai. Given her unerring eye for imagery, and her ability to get beyond the surface and dig into the core of her characters, it’s hard to believe that this is just Kapadia’s second film. It’s one of the year’s best pictures, hands down.

The nurses are roommates of slightly different ages, and, though very different, they build a relationship after a rocky start, finding commonality in such mundane items as a housecat and a rice cooker. They each struggle with work and personal relationships—and, for a while, each other—as they seek to build meaningful lives in a dense city.

Magnificently photographed by Ranabir Das, Mumbai teems, heaves, and glows all around them. At times, it provides an almost fantastical setting, lit by fairy lights and fireworks. It’s one of the great film depictions of a city as a character in the story. In fact, it’s almost sad to leave when the two women head for the coast, but the magic only gets more intense at the shoreline. ~SM