Payal Kapadia secures nomination at Directors Guild of America Awards after Golden Globes snub

The Directors Guild of America (DGA) has nominated All We Imagine As Light filmmaker Payal Kapadia in the first-time director category for the upcoming 2025 awards. The news comes days after Kapadia lost out on the best director - motion picture Golden Globe to Brady Corbet of The Brutalist fame. (Also Read – Payal Kapadia on All We Imagine As Light not winning at Golden Globes: ‘We didn't win but...’)

The DGA, an entertainment guild that represents the interests of film and TV directors in the US motion picture industry and abroad, announced the nominations on Wednesday night.

Other nominees in the category are Megan Park for My Old Ass, RaMell Ross for Nickel Boys, Halfdan Ullmann Tondel for Armand, and Sean Wang for Didi, reported Variety.

All We Imagine As Light, one of the most globally celebrated films of 2024 and the winner of the Cannes Grand Prix, marks Kapadia's feature film debut.

The FTII graduate already made waves in the international cinema circuit through short film Afternoon Clouds (2017) and documentary-feature A Night of Knowing Nothing (2021).

Kapadia's film explores love, longing and loneliness in the bustling city of Mumbai through three women, two Malayali nurses — Prabha and Anu — and their friend Parvati. It stars Kani Kusruti, Divya Prabha and Chhaya Kadam.

Produced by Petit Chaos, Chalk & Cheese, and Another Birth, Malayalam-Hindi drama All We Imagine As Light charted history when it became the first Indian movie to win the Grand Prix award at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival.

Kapadia was recently named the Best Director by the New York-based The National Society of Film Critics (NSFC). She is also expected to earn a nomination at the BAFTAs, in which she features in the directors longlist.