Library Chat: Payal Kapadia and Adila Bennedjaï-Zou
Filmmaker Payal Kapadia, acclaimed for her award-winning work at the Cannes Film Festival and celebrated for her poetic, politically attuned storytelling, and sound producer Adila Bennedjaï-Zou, whose practice centers on immersive sound design and nuanced sonic narratives, have spent this year together as Institute Fellows. Together, they reflect on their approaches to sound and interviews, how these elements are woven into their creative processes, and the ways they shape the emotional and narrative depth of their projects.
Payal Kapadia is a filmmaker from Mumbai, India. Trained at the Film and Television Institute of India, she has directed a non-fiction film A Night of Knowing Nothing which premiered at the Director’s Fortnight section in Cannes in 2021 where it won the Golden Eye Documentary Award. Her first fiction feature film All We Imagine As Light (2024) is an ode to friendship and Mumbai. It was the first Indian film in Cannes competition after a thirty-year absence. It won the Grand Prix at Cannes and has continued its run to the Golden Globes 2025 (nominations for Best Director and Best Foreign Language Film) and won numerous awards, including Best Film Prize at the Asian Film Awards 2025 in Hong Kong.
Adila Bennedjaï-Zou is an author and sound artist. A radio producer at France Culture since 2015, where she frequently contributes to “Les pieds sur terre” and “LSD La Série Documentaire,” her work revolves around the idea of collective autobiography, articulating testimonies, archives, and first-person accounts. Based on the idea that private life is imbued with political stakes, she seeks to capture the places where the intimate and the collective meet. She was a fellow at the Villa Médicis in Rome in 2020-21.
