For this film, Anuparna Roy was the winner of the Best Director award in the Horrizonti section, Venice Film Festival 2025.
Thooya (Naaz Shaikh), a migrant and aspiring actress, spends her days moonlighting as a sex worker in her apartment, attending virtual therapy, and shedding her inhibitions in acting class. New to Mumbai, Thooya rents out her spare room to the quiet Shweta (Sumi Baghel), who works in a call centre and is also new to Mumbai.
Taking a little time to warm up, they soon start to build a connection, one in which they rely on each other, building their own cocoon far away from the noise and challenges of the oppressive city. But as the realities of how the two women live their lives begin to clash, the fragile bond is tested.
What unfolds is a quiet blooming of selfhood, survival, and a kinship between women navigating a world that rarely sees them.
Anuparna Roy Director
Filmography Selected
Indian writer and director (b. 1994) from Narayanpur, a small village in Purulia, West Bengal, Anuparna Roy graduated in English literature from Burdwan University and later pursued studies in mass communications. Before entering the film industry, she worked as an IT sales executive. In 2021, deciding to change fields, she studied acting and eventually moved behind the camera to write and direct her first short film, Run to the River (2023). Songs of Forgotten Trees was her feature debut and earned her the Best Director Award in the Orizzonti section of the Venice Film Festival. She was the first Indian woman to receive this distinction.
Beyond cinema, Anuparna is also a published writer. Her article addressing the rights of minorities, the aftermath of the controversial new citizenship law and the lives of Bay of Bengal refugees was featured on Word is One News (a widely viewed news channel based in India). Now based in Mumbai, she is actively developing new scripts. Her current work explores themes rooted in Third World cinema, female agency, and marginalized narratives.
RUN TO THE RIVER short (2023)
SONGS OF FORGOTTEN TREES (2025)
LOVERS IN THE BLUE NIGHT (2026)
"Roy’s approach is melodic and understated, and mines drama from human corners where other storytellers might not think to look…
On the surface, one might be tempted to compare Roy to Payal Kapadia, whose 2024 drama All We Imagine As Light—a recent tale of friendship between Mumbai’s migrant women—but Roy’s style is a much closer cousin to Ryusuke Hamaguchi, who western viewers might know from Drive My Car. Her camera is far less steady than Hamaguchi’s (with the purpose of embodying interpersonal tension), but her scenes similarly unfold in lengthy two-shots of characters speaking, and speaking, and speaking, until suddenly, meaning and weight punch through the façade of casual chatter about sex and sexuality (a topic that’s a rarity in Indian cinema)….
so few independent debuts out of India arrive with such remarkable emotional force."
Siddhant Adlakha, Observer
"An early montage in Songs of Forgotten Trees depicts Mumbai buildings filled with cramped, shoebox-sized apartments, an evocative visual for a film about Indian women scrambling for societal space. Within these walls, roommates Thooya (Naaz Shaikh) and Shweta (Sumi Baghel) are further hemmed in, filmed through slivers of doorway, inside a mosquito net and reflected in shards of a mirror. And yet, a fragile, tender intimacy between them finds room to expand."
Gayle Sequeira, Sight and Sound
“A clear-eyed, restrained, moving story of two young women, lonely and bruised, finding solace in each other.
The heart of this film is a scene in which the two women are in two bathrooms next to each...what starts out as buoyant banter shifts seamlessly into grief and tears. The scene is beautifully staged and performed.”
Anupama Chopra, The Hollywood Reporter
★★★★ “A remarkably restrained and quiet film. With sensitivity, Roy invites us to contemplate what it means to truly see another person, and how often we fail to do so, even in our most intimate relationships. It is a film about longing, distance, and the fragile, flickering moments of connection that we chase despite knowing they may never fully arrive.”
Walter Neto, International Cinephile Society
