- 2022
- Cinema Guild
- 1 h 37 m
SummaryThrough fictional love letters found in a cupboard at the Film and Television Institute of India, we meet L, a film student 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 as they take to the streets to protest widesprea...
Directed By:Payal Kapadia
Written By:Payal Kapadia, Himanshu Prajapati
A Night of Knowing Nothing
Metascore
Universal Acclaim
87
User score
Generally Favorable
6.7
My Score
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Top Cast
Metascore
Universal Acclaim
87
100% Positive
9 Reviews
9 Reviews
0% Mixed
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Feb 23, 2022
100
The movie expresses so much, so delicately, about precarious young hearts, the storm clouds of nationalist politics and, most of all, the possibility and necessity of artistic freedom.
Oct 5, 2021
91
This combination of lively image and mournful narration imbues the camera’s fly-on-the-wall perspective with a sense of melancholy. As life unfolds with verve and passion, the spectral narrator, L, exists at a remove, as if she were both present amidst the frolic, and distant from it, her heartbreak leaving her unable to get involved.
Apr 5, 2022
90
Only a few seconds into Payal Kapadia’s shimmery, poetic essay doc A Night of Knowing Nothing, it feels like we are a few hours deep into the excavation of someone else’s memories.
Feb 9, 2022
83
Through its slippery cinematic language and elusive point-of-view, Kapadia depicts a moment happening urgently in the film’s present-day strand––a wave of anti-government student protests and their resulting crackdown––and treats it like memory, which we know operates as anything but a direct mental recording device.
Apr 4, 2022
80
Love for the moving image – and love for artistic creativity – marches hand in hand with the fight for political freedom.
Feb 9, 2022
75
Because of Kapadia’s collage-like approach, A Night Of Knowing Nothing occasionally feels loose and shapeless. But there is a discernible trajectory here.
Sep 10, 2021
75
Right from its opening frame, there’s a lyrical, dreamlike quality to Payal Kapadia’s debut feature.
User score
Generally Favorable
6.7
67% Positive
4 Ratings
4 Ratings
0% Mixed
0 Ratings
0 Ratings
33% Negative
2 Ratings
2 Ratings
Jun 21, 2023
3
A film with a very important message that gets highly diluted by abstract and obscure artistic decisions. The strong areas of this movie are the real footage of protests and the violent reactions to the students. The moments of silence or ambient noises with grainy, dark, black and white footage are distractions away from telling the story of student freedom and the continuing societal issues with castes in India. Check out our podcast 15K+ Random Movie Reviews for a more in depth review.
Report
Production Company:
- Petit Chaos
- Another Birth
- Région Nouvelle-Aquitaine
- Centre national du cinéma et de l'image animée (CNC)
- IDFA Bertha Fund
- Ciclic-Region Centre-Val de Loire
Release Date:Feb 11, 2022
Duration:1 h 37 m
Genres:
Awards
Cinema Eye Honors Awards, US
• 4 Nominations
Cannes Film Festival
• 1 Win & 3 Nominations
Taiwan International Documentary Film Festival
• 1 Win & 2 Nominations
