“Yeah, I didn’t want to be on Twitter.”
“I made the account because somebody made a fake account and then I wanted to show that I am there actually and that is not me,” filmmaker Payal Kapadia told Decode.
X users have been receptive to Kapadia’s efforts to drum up publicity for her debut fiction film, get cinema goers to watch the movie in the intended aspect ratio, organise more theatrical screenings and engage with fans, on the Elon Musk owned platform.
When an X user tweeted that it was the fifth time he was asking her to screen the film in Dubai, she replied saying it was released there but no one went to watch it.
The Mumbai-based director, who has a tumultuous history with social media, told Decode she created her account @PayalKapadia86 after a fake account impersonating her cropped up following her film ‘All We Imagine As Light’ winning the Grand Prix at the Festival de Cannes.
BOOM had debunked the imposter X account which was accepting congratulatory messages from Prime Minister Narendra Modi, among others.
ALSO READ: Impersonator Of Cannes Grand Prix Winner Payal Kapadia Goes Viral On X
Kapadia explained, “actually when I joined Twitter and then I got a lot of people following I felt it was a nice way to also talk about the film whenever I want to get a hold of the narrative in some way I could put out what I wanted to say. So I put out a statement also because there was a lot of things being spoken about my FTII time and everything. And I just wanted to say how I feel about all these things.”
The account had a modest 13.8K followers at the time of writing this piece.
The 39-year old filmmaker got the idea of a film centred on female nurses during her final year at the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) while dividing her time between hospitals to tend to two family members. The film, which is primarily in Malayalam but weaves the city of Mumbai as a character, stars actors Kani Kusruti, Divya Prabha and Chhaya Kadam and is an Indo-French co-production.
In 2021, her documentary ‘A Night Of Knowing Nothing’ about student protests in India, won the Golden Eye for Best Documentary at Cannes. The win quickly trickled out of the news cycle back home. The documentary is still not freely accessible in India. The director, who was at the epicentre of protests at FTII, deleted her Instagram account and deactivated her Facebook account, around the same time and is still facing a court case related to the protests.
After her second win at Cannes last year, Kapadia used the spotlight to pen a statement about the need for affordable public education offered by institutes such as her alma mater the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), Mumbai’s JJ School of Arts and the need for autonomous systems that are inclusive to help fund independent filmmakers.
She has so far not enumerated the politics that underpin her latest film, on social media. In interviews to promote the film, she has stuck to speaking about the craft of filmmaking and discussing her cinematic influences.
“I just feel that in a medium where I am only able to write seven-eight lines anything that I put out there…it will just reduce the film to those polemics which I think we have tried to weave into the film in a way that is not a question of right or wrong but is much more nuanced.
And the film also doesn’t really give any such message besides you know to be more accepting. Any other thing that I write in it I feel at least on social media will reduce it to those words.”
When ‘All We Imagine As Light' eventually released in cinemas in India in late November last year, it found itself competing for screens with Allu Arjun starrer Pushpa 2.
Kapadia once again turned to X to bring the film back to theatres and tweeted a Google form to gauge how many people were interested in watching the movie on the big screen.
The film, which was not picked as India’s official entry to the Oscars, has gone on to sweep awards at international film festivals, nominated for two Golden Globes awards including best director and even made it to the top of former United States President Barack Obama’s list of his Favourite Movies of 2024.
Jahnu Barua, head of the Film Federation of India, critiqued the film as ‘technically very poor' while fending off growing criticism over the federation’s decision to not shortlist it for the Oscars.
Meanwhile the film won the best film of the year 2024 by Sight and Sound, a prestigious magazine for cinephiles across the world published by the British Film Institute.
Even as it notched up huge wins overseas, conservative Indians and right wing social media users have dismissed the movie accusing it of pandering to the West and unfairly labelling it as ‘poverty porn’.
These contradictions can be seen even in how the director has used X - a platform increasingly known for being a hot bed of misinformation, hate speech and conspiracy theories, to rally support for a tender film that celebrates female friendships.
She also started tweeting about the film’s aspect ratio - 1:1.66 and telling moviegoers to demand that the film be screened in the correct aspect ratio.
“Actually, I just put it out there because I was very frustrated about this aspect ratio thing. I didn’t think it was going to become a thing,” Kapadia, who has started working on her next film, told Decode.
“Then people started following it and saying yeah in my cinema it was not good. That really bothers me because you envision a film in a certain way and if the aspect ratio is wrong it just looks horrible. That was really like important to me.”
Payal Kapadia, who never had an X account before 2024, reminds many of the early days of social media when people went online to discuss their interests and passions even if it was niche or weird, especially if it was weird.
“I also did something on this Reddit. I did this A.M.A (Ask Me Anything) business. And there people are anonymous so they do write…like there was more criticism, I could (tell) they were putting out there...but a lot of it was very well thought out,” the director said.
“Also, it’s how it’s worded that you understand that yeah, this person has thought about the movie not because it’s in the press but they saw it and they had some proper views about it. Then that’s great also.”
Some of the love for the film has come from aspiring artists interpreting scenes from the movie in their own artworks.
“I really like this fan art stuff. I was really pleasantly surprised by it. Also because the sheer imagination that people have,” Kapadia said.
“One of them was such a nice poster and it was so nice that some people think it’s the actual poster (of the film). Yeah there’s one where Prabha (a character in the film) is glowing. They have made her into a cut-out and people like it so much that they share that as if it’s the (official) poster. That’s so cute.”