Bringing your Cannes Grand Prix-winning film home is an exhilarating feeling. But director Payal Kapadia has a specific reason, among others, to be excited about showcasing All We Imagine as Light to an Indian audience—that she won’t have to explain monsoon to viewers. “When I show my film in different countries, I have to introduce what monsoon is to us. Here when the film premièred at MAMI Film Festival, I didn’t have to explain anything,” she grins.

The Kani Kusruti, Chhaya Kadam and Divya Prabha-starrer tells the story of an unlikely friendship between women of different ages. The November 22 release is Kapadia’s attempt to resolve a conflict that has long brewed within her. “I wanted to make a generational film about female friendship. I felt it is convenient for society to be designed in a way that women shouldn’t be friends with each other. It doesn’t want us to be supportive of each other. I’ve made many mistakes with friends and other women I was close to, where I didn’t respond to them in the right way. We make films to answer certain questions that are within us. This was a core conflict, and I wanted to talk about it,” she says.