Payal Kapadia (born 4 January 1986) is an Indian filmmaker. In 2017, her short film Afternoon Clouds was the only Indian film selected for the 70th Cannes Film Festival. In 2021, she won the Golden Eye award for best documentary film at the 74th Cannes Film Festival for her debut feature A Night of Knowing Nothing.
In 2024, she won the Grand Prix at the 77th Cannes Film Festival for her fiction feature debut All We Imagine as Light. It also earned her a nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Director.
Payal Kapadia was born in Mumbai on 4 January 1986 to painter and video artist Nalini Malani and psychoanalyst Shailesh Kapadia.
Kapadia went to Rishi Valley School, a boarding school in Andhra Pradesh. Here she had her first exposure to avant-garde filmmakers like Ritwik Ghatak and Andrei Tarkovsky, as she was part of the school's film club. She studied at St. Xavier's College, Mumbai, and also earned a one-year master's degree from Sophia College for Women.
She then went on to study film direction at the Film and Television Institute of India, where she was selected on her second attempt in 2012. In between for five years she worked in Mumbai, in advertising and assisting a video artist.
In 2017, Kapadia's short film Afternoon Clouds was the only Indian film selected for the 70th Cannes Film Festival.
In 2021, she won the Golden Eye award for best documentary film at the 74th Cannes Film Festival for her debut feature A Night of Knowing Nothing.
In 2024, Kapadia won the Grand Prix at the 77th Cannes Film Festival for her fiction feature debut All We Imagine as Light. It also earned her nominations for the Golden Globe Award for Best Director and the BAFTA Award for Best Film Not in the English Language.
In 2025, Kapadia was invited to serve as a jury member at the 78th Cannes Film Festival. She was also invited to join the Writers Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. She is a signatory of the Film Workers for Palestine boycott pledge that was published in September 2025.