Three years ago, Anuparna Roy fled the trappings of an impending marriage and left her Narayanpur village in Bengal’s Purulia to go study and work in call centres in Mumbai. The city now serves as the cinematic canvas for the self-taught director-screenwriter’s personal stories of migration and loss.
If her 2025 debut feature Songs of the Forgotten Trees follows a migrant aspiring actress and part-time sex worker sharing a rented Mumbai apartment and forming an intimate bond (which travelled to the Venice International Film Festival), 2026’s Lovers in the Blue Night traces the entangled lives of four migrants on the city’s margins: a closeted gay husband, his lonely wife, a thief and a pimp.
Karim (Pritam Pilania) and Amina (Neelima Sharma) in a still from Lovers in the Blue Night.
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Roy, 28, was shivering while she received the Best Director award last year in the Orizzonti (Horizons) section of the world’s oldest film festival — the first Indian to win this award [11 years after Chaitanya Tamhane had won the Orizzonti Best Film award for Court; 2014]. Nervous, she’d forgotten her award acceptance speech and instead called to end the Gaza genocide. That came naturally, for Roy wears her politics on her sleeve.
This year, however, she is more assured of herself as she returns to Venice with Lovers in the Blue Night, competing in the same category a second time in a consecutive year — yet another feat for an Indian filmmaker at the festival. She’ll also be a jury member at the Busan International Film Festival in October, where Lovers… will have its Asian premiere at the festival’s ‘A Window on Asian Cinema’ segment.
Asian cinema holds a special place for Roy, who borrowed inspiration from the films of Tsai Ming-liang and Wong Kar-wai to create the art design in Lovers…, in particular to the blue night bar — with mirrored lights, and long lanes as a character, not just as space. And, “I didn’t want to showcase women as dancing or shoot anything vulgar. I know my audiences are very much aware what’s happening inside the bar. I want to get rid of the ‘male gaze’ in my film. That’s one responsibility I have taken. Instead, we showed fictional hotline cabins,” she says.
Personal is political
In her sophomore, Roy builds on Ameena’s story, a bonded labourer at their Narayanpur home, whose husband Karim was a closeted gay man, and gives them an imaginary escape to Mumbai. She calls it her “responsibility” to platform marginalised stories in films.
Neelima Sharma as Ameena in a still from Lovers in the Blue Night.
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“I’m a woman from a third world country. I can’t keep cinema and politics separate. For me, losing my friend was political. Leaving my house and becoming a migrant was political. My character Karim killing rats is as political as kissing a guy,” says Roy. If films like Roma, The Color of Pomegranates, The Zone of Interest, Moonlight, Manta Ray, and Hot Milk can “talk about the sociopolitical situation of their countries; why can’t we?” she asks.
And further adds, “In my films, you’ll definitely find politics but I don’t like such films which exaggerates the director’s political idea more than the narrative.” Party politics has “done nothing for the women…I’ve seen a lot growing up in Bengal. It’s a hopeless situation there.” If her father kept Roy away from her best friend Jhuma Nath, who’s “not from [their] caste”, a government’s initiative for Dalit women forced her friend into marrying a much older man. Songs… ruminates on the loss.
Departures and migration
Roy seeks escape or freedom in nature/river, a recurring motif in her films. A young Roy used to be mesmerised by the river imagery her grandmother conjured up in tales. Only to realise years later that like herself, her grandmother too was never allowed to cross her village’s border to go see a river or nature’s beauty. For Roy, these stories became her ammunition to flee. “The conflicts my father and I share are good. If that gets resolved, I won’t be able to make films,” she says.
Though she wasn’t allowed to step out as a child, the outside world came to her through films on the television: Ritwik Ghatak’s Meghe Dhaka Tara and Titash Ekti Nodir Naam, and Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali. Years later, she was moved by SRK’s Swades, My Name is Khan, and contemporary Bengali parallel films Bakita Byaktigato and Asha Jaoar Majhe/Labour of Love.
Karim (Pritam Pilania) and Sukka (Bhushan Simpi) in a still from Lovers in the Blue Night..
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The English literature graduate and an ardent fan of James Joyce, Roy channels her sardonic humour in a Joycean scene in Lovers…, when Karim (Pritam Pilania) and Sukka (Bhushan Simpi) are sitting in a gentle embrace atop a moving truck, their arms and spirits high, and Karim says to Sukka (a small-time thief and party worker): “back home, politicians arrive in helicopters, they never land.”
Roy is amused by how her Wikipedia entry “claims” that Ghatak gave her her name; the filmmaker died before Roy was born. Although the themes of migration and loss connect their craft. If it shaped Ghatak’s post-Partition cinema, it gets a modern-day iteration in Roy’s flawed but striking migrant, who channels the quieter, everyday departures imposed by poverty, patriarchy, and social identity (caste, religion, sexuality). Even as her family still clings to the idea of an undivided Bengal, she says, “Migration is very much political to me. And interstate migrations are not hyped or discussed, but are very important, for why are you forced to leave your place; who are imposing this?” In Lovers…, the theme is also underscored through linguistic diversity: Gujarati Hindi, Jalgaon Marathi and the disappearing Sylheti Bengali.
Capturing queer complexity
Producer Vikas Kumar, one half of Khan and Kumar Media, calls Roy jhujharu, loosely translated as soldier-like. Actor Kumar (Aarya; Kaala Paani) jokes being tricked by her at NFDC Film Bazaar for a lead role in a film which never happened. Then he donned his producer’s hat. Producer Romil Modi (casting director on All We Imagine as Light; Laapataa Ladies) recalls Roy’s message to him to pitch Songs… and wanting to meet filmmaker Kiran Rao (who was busy with Lust Stories 3 at the time): “I am not an actor. Please talk to me.”
Producers Vikas Kumar (left) and Sharib Khan of Khan and Kumar Media.
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Roy’s films have always had male producers. “I didn’t get approached by female producers, which is sad,” she says, “I don’t like to chase producers. If I don’t get one, I am going to work hard and make my own film.”
Producer Romil Modi, who has been the casting director on All We Imagine as Light and Laapataa Ladies.
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This time, “we are more confident,” says Bhibhanshu Rai, who also produced Roy short Run to the River (2024). They also had more budget/funds. “Songs… was made in one small flat. For Lovers…, the canvas was bigger. We had to shoot 30 days, across 18 different locations,” he adds. The most challenging bit about production — shooting took place during the time of the Israel-U.S.-Iran war — was sourcing (LPG) gas cylinders.
Producer Bibhanshu Rai has backed all of Anuparna Roy’s films, starting with her short film Run to the River (2024).
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It’s the same team this time, on the India-U.S. production, along with co-producer Neeraj Churi [Sundance-winning Sabar Bonda], plus a few more producers. Churi (Lotus Visual Productions) is bringing his experience of shepherding queer films through the international festival and distribution spaces to Lovers… “What I find particularly beautiful about the film is the world in which its queer characters exist. These are working-class characters who may not necessarily have the vocabulary, agency or privilege to ‘come out’ in the way we have become accustomed to seeing queer lives represented in cinema,” he says. “But that doesn’t mean they don’t experience desire, love or intimacy. They find their own ways of expressing these while navigating the realities of the world they live in and the responsibilities they carry. Anuparna captures that complexity beautifully.”
Only three more films?
Besides Roy’s film, the independent films Khan and Kumar Media are championing (Yashasvi Juyal’s The Ink-Stained Hand and The Missing Thumb and Ridham Janve’s Hunter’s Moon, among 15 films in their current roster) have been getting selected at global festivals. What’s the secret? New York-based Sharib Khan, the other half of Khan and Kumar Media, says: “You wake up in the morning and there’s nothing more important in your life that you want to do. That’s how I’ve been running all my companies (including Ammi Media). With that kind of drive, nobody can stop you.”
“Getting selected is only the beginning,” says Churi. He knows the real drill starts only after that.
Co-executive producer Neeraj Churi, of Lotus Visual Productions, earlier co-produced the Sundance-winning Sabar Bonda.
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Ask Khan on what makes him pick stories, and he says, “we need to resonate with the storyteller and how the story is being told,” although “even if we resonate with the film, it doesn’t really mean the film will commercially succeed or sustain itself. Our films are still out in the market, we’ve to see where we land financially.” Songs… just released in the U.K., Portugal, and will reach Indian theatres this month. Lovers… already has an international sales agent, Parallax Films.
Khan and Kumar chose to not watch the final cut; and watched the final film with the audience in Venice on Friday, just like with Songs… last year, when they signed on Roy’s next even before she bagged the award. “That’s our commitment to the project. Once we sign on a film, we don’t meddle with the creative team. It’s their film,” says Khan. The duo will likely back Roy’s next film.
Meanwhile, Roy says she has just two to three more films in her, including a prequel to Songs…, and a historical/period film about the 1932 Poona Pact set in Bengal. “Then, I’ll sign off, unless something personal and big happens to me. I can’t do justice to others’ writings,” says the English literature graduate, who gives poetic titles to her films, “Films are not products. If I were to make a lot films, then I am going to make nonsense,” she concludes with a laugh.
tanushree.ghosh@thehindu.co.in
