Payal Kapadia, 2021, 96min

In her debut film, Payal Kapadia deftly merges reality with fiction, weaving together archival footage with student protest videos to tell the story of L, a student at the Film and Television Institute of India, writing to her estranged lover while he is away. Gradually we’re immersed in the drastic changes taking place at the school and in the lives of young people across the country. A Night Of Knowing Nothing is a vital tapestry of the personal and the political, an essential document of contemporary India and a nostalgic look at youth fighting the injustice of their time.