In 2017, Director Payal Kapadia and Ranabir Das (Indian producer, photographer and editor of the film), began recording student life around them while they were film students at the Film and Television Institute of India. Gradually, with a growing amount of footage from various sources, a unique film began to emerge that captures the main hopes and anxieties of public university students in India today, amidst growing protests and social unrest. The narrative is anchored on a fictionalized, frustrated love story, told through the letters of a female university student while her lover is away. Through her telling of current events, merged with the highly inventive use of documentary material, an atmospheric and suspenseful unconventional story is crafted that at its heart clamors for a more just and open society. As Kapadia has said, “public universities still potentially provide spaces for true freedom… this is the freedom that we need to strive for.”

“Payal Kapadia’s extraordinary debut feature A Night of Knowing Nothing is a hypnotic essay about the loss of innocence and the spark that inspires one to fight.” (Point of View Magazine)

“An essential film that marries formal inventiveness with the events surrounding the political and social upheaval under Modi’s increasingly nationalistic and authoritarian India through the eyes and experiences of young Indians in public universities.” (News Nine)