Payal Kapadia scripted history when her directorial feature debut, 'All We Imagine as Light' won the prestigious Grand Prix, the second-highest accolade at the Cannes Film Festival. This was the first Indian film to win the Grand Prix. She the first Indian director to win the award. Then came Golden Globes. She became the first Indian filmmaker to land a nomination for best director at the 82nd Golden Globe Awards. In an exclusive interview with The Telegraph Online, Kapadia throws light on her journey, her new-found fame and her ambitious project.

"I did not expect that our small film will go to such lengths. We have been working on this film for quite some time. When we make films, our first objective is not that they will go to some film festival. We make films for people to come and watch. But our film went to festivals and that's how we got the distribution. It has released in theatres, all over the country. That is our biggest LIGHT," Kapadia said about her film.

Kapadia's historic journey began in her boarding school in Andhra Pradesh where she could watch one extra film a week on one condition.

"We did not have television in school but we would watch one film every Saturday. When our chemistry teacher who was Bengali, started a film club, we students saw it as an opportunity to watch one more film every week. We watched films of Andrei Tarkovsky, Satyajit Ray and Ritwik Ghatak. Our teacher also encouraged us to write film reports afterwards. I wrote my first film report on Ray's 'Mahanagar'. When I read it after so many years, I realised it was so bad. But as a young girl, somehow that film just opened up my mind. Some nerve it touched for sure," Kapadia recalled.

At her alma mater, Pune's prestigious Film and Television Institute of India, the films she watched, the filmmakers she studied inspired her in more ways than one. Kapadia shared how experimental filmmaking shaped her storytelling.

"At FTII, we watched films of Mrinal Sen, Ritwik Ghatak, Satyajit Ray, John Abraham, films of the 1960s from the East European countries, French New Wave films by François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard and Agnès Varda and Czech films by Miloš Forman. Those filmmakers also didn't have the money to make films in studios. They were the first filmmakers to take their cameras and shoot on the streets. Many filmmakers are now doing that. Instead of worrying about funds to make a big set, we can just go with a DSLR camera and shoot documentary-style. That influence was very useful for me to think visually," Kapadia explained.

While Kapadia captured the heart of Mumbai in 'All We Imagine As Light', her own relation with the city comes to light through her characters. "My relationship with Mumbai is quite contradictory. On one hand, I understand that it is a place of opportunities but it is a very difficult city. It is not a city that is very comfortable, unless you have a lot of money. So, that is a disappointment that I have some times. Inequality has mostly become the characteristic of Mumbai. This makes me angry and I've shown that in my film too," she added.

And it is this relation with Mumbai that Kapadia wants to further explore. "I want to make a trilogy on Mumbai," she said.

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Reporter: Debapriya Dutta Majumder
Video Producer: Shohini Bose
Video Editor: Abhishek Sharma