In A NIGHT OF KNOWING NOTHING, Payal Kapadia combines reality and fiction, dreams, memories, fantasies and fears into a poetic narrative that is as personal as it is political: L, a film student in India, writes letters to her estranged lover. Her letters, like the black and white 16mm footage, convey a sense of the drastic changes happening around her. The repressive policies of the Hindu nationalist government challenge future filmmakers like L to reflect on the social function of what they do. (Philip Widmann)