All we imagine as light! Could someone explain this title of a short film in simpler words?

It isn’t literal. In literary terms light means hope and promise and optimism. I have no idea about this movie but I imagine it is a creative name that isn’t meant to be a direct phrase.

I've found the director's own explanation of the name: >"The title of the film is … about hope. Sometimes, when things look bleak, you don't see a way out. You can't imagine that way out. I thought that hope and light could be used synonymously. The title is also in one of the dialogues in the film because one of the characters is stuck in a dark room for a long time and can't imagine light. This connected with the idea of possibility—when you've never had it, you don't see it." Perhaps then it means, 'All the things we image to be good, even though we have not been fortunate enough to actually experience them yet.' That said, books and movies (especially ones that seek to be perceived as literary, serious, or dramatic) often choose names that that are phrases like this: they sound snatched from a longer quote, they often include positive words (like "light"), they have a good rhythm almost like a proverb, and they have meanings just obscure enough to make the reader/viewer wonder, "What could that mean?" Often they are taken from lines of famous poetry, quotes of philosophers, or passages of scripture. Although it can be done well, it is a bit hackneyed and can sometimes be a little cringe-inducing; and then sometimes it's precisely the perfect name. An incomplete list: *All Quiet on the Western Front*; *All the King's Men*; *All the Light We Cannot See*; *Call Me by Your Name*; *Do Not Say We Have Nothing*; *Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind*; *The Fault in Our Stars*; *A Few Good Men*; *For Whom the Bells Tolls*; *His Dark Materials*; *Life Is Beautiful*; *My Sister's Keeper*; *No Country for Old Men*; *Of Mice and Men*; *On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous*; *One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest*; *Poor Things*; *The Sense of an Ending*; *Small Things Like These*; *The Sound and the Fury*; *The Stars in the Bright Sky*; *The Sun Also Rises*; *Tender Is the Night*; *There Will Be Blood*; *Things Fall Apart*; *The Things They Carried*; *A Thousand Splendid Suns*; *Through a Glass, Darkly*; *The Unbearable Lightness of Being*; *What Dreams May Come*; *The Winter of Our Discontent*; and on and on.

everything we thought was light- in this context light is like a metaphor for good things, just like how we consider God as light in certain religions. I haven't watched the movie either but I know that the malayalam title means the same thing. The important thing that you need to catch out of this title is disillusionment. The malayalam title is in past tense so it makes this clearer: "all we imagined as light" If you're advanced in English, you should be able to read between the lines and guess that they're talking about some disillusionment or something regarded as "light" which in reality isn't quite the case.

As a native English speaker, and having read the synopsis, I've got no idea why that's the title. Maybe it's a translation of a phrase in Hindi, or something - that's just a guess. But honestly, sometimes titles of movies make no sense to anyone. Maybe the writers just liked the phrase. I note that, at the end, "They all chat happily, as the **lights** of the shack shine over them" - so maybe it's related to that.

Titles of films and journalistic titles are often written for brevity so the English can be a little odd. Also there may be an element of poetic language which uses obscure word. meanings Given the brief synopsis of the film I would possibly read this as being about the hopes and dreams of the protagonists. “All that we imagine” eg the things we are dreaming for and “as light” using the meaning of “hope” eg “guiding light” But not really sure

It seems like a very poetic, metaphorical title, but to me it sounds like it's saying, "all the things that we metaphorically compare to a light in the darkness"? Like if they're living in hard times, then there are little slivers of hope that they notice? Perhaps the title is meant to be vague and open to interpretation, and thus more thought-provoking.