The radical honesty of 'Sister Midnight'

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Sister Midnight, which premiered at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. The film features a knockout performance by Radhika Apte as Uma, a disgruntled new bride left to her own devices in an overwhelming and chaotic new city by a recalcitrant husband she barely knows.

Hardly a “domestic goddess" by her own admission, Uma must learn the basics of cooking and running a modest household, while her husband Gopal spends his days at work and evenings out drinking. Constantly itching to escape their tiny single-room home in a shanty somewhere in Mumbai, Uma sets off on her own at all hours of the day and night in pursuit of adventure.

(The film shares DNA, in more ways than one, with the Iranian “western horror" film A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night.) With each of her nocturnal jaunts, Uma inches closer towards a derangement neither she nor the audience quite understands until deep into the film. Kandhari, an Indian writer/director born in the Middle East and now based in London, returns with a feature film after nearly two decades, following his 2005 debut Bye Bye Miss Goodnight and a handful of shorts.

Sister Midnight has been selected as part of Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight, an independent sidebar at the festival that is dedicated to showcasing “the most singular forms of contemporary cinema," and in particular those that “reinvent cinematic genres." Also read: Why ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ is the greatest action movie of all time Kandhari’s film certainly occupies a space unto itself, quite unlike anything else in contemporary Indian cinema. It’s impressive how much he and cinematographer Sverre Sørdal can do within the confines of a tiny room, using light, shadows and small dark corners to disquieting effect.