Payal Kapadia (filmmaker)

Payal Kapadia (born 1986) is an Indian filmmaker. She won the Golden Eye award for best documentary film at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival for her film A Night of Knowing Nothing. In 2017, her film Afternoon Clouds was the only Indian film that was selected for the 70th Cannes Film Festival. In 2024, she won the Grand Prix at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival for her film All We Imagine as Light.

Biography
Born in Mumbai in 1986 to painter and video artist Nalini Malani, Kapadia went to Rishi Valley School, a boarding school in Andhra Pradesh. Here she had her first exposure to avant-garde filmmakers like Ritwik Ghatak and Andrei Tarkovsky as she was part of the school's film club. She studied at St. Xavier's College, Mumbai. She got a one-year master's degree from Sophia College, Mumbai. She then went on to study film direction at the Film and Television Institute of India, where she was selected on her second attempt in 2012. In between for five years she worked in Mumbai, in advertising and assisting a video artist. In 2015 she led the protest program against the appointment of Gajendra Chauhan as chairman in FTII, and the authority filed FIR against her. The institute authority restricted the grants, and she was denied scholarships.