The light, the lives, and the textures of contemporary, working-class Mumbai are explored and celebrated by writer/director Payal Kapadia, who won the Grand Prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Centering on two roommates who also work together in a city hospital — head nurse Prabha and recent hire Anu — plus their coworker, cook Parvaty, Kapadia’s film alights on moments of connection and heartache, hope and disappointment to create a soulful study of the transformative power of friendship and sisterhood, in all its complexities and richness.

1944, Vermiglio, a remote mountain village. The arrival of Pietro, a deserter, into the family of the local teacher, and his love for the teacher’s eldest daughter, will change the course of everyone’s life.