On the first evening of September 2025, as the late summer light dimmed over Venice, a name from the red soil of Purulia echoed across one of the world’s grandest stages. Anuparna Roy, a thirty-one-year-old debut filmmaker from West Bengal, had just been announced as the winner of the Best Director award in the Orizzonti (Horizons) section of the 82nd Venice International Film Festival. Her film, Songs of Forgotten Trees, a quiet and unsettling portrait of two migrant women navigating survival and intimacy in Mumbai, had drawn critics into its fragile silences. Now, the young woman who had once sold her television set to fund her short films stood before the world, trembling but unwavering, with words that rippled far beyond cinema.
“Every child deserves peace, freedom, liberation,” she said, her voice steady, her eyes glistening. Palestine is no exception. Supporting justice does not make me less Indian.”
It was an unusual acceptance speech for Venice, which often sees conventional thank-yous and restrained expressions of gratitude. But Roy was clear: her cinema, her conscience, her politics were inseparable. She was the first Indian ever to win this award, and she wanted her voice to carry not just the triumph of her personal journey but also solidarity with children under siege, women silenced, migrants erased, and stories forgotten.
The auditorium erupted in applause. Critics who had just days earlier praised the understated power of Songs of Forgotten Trees were now struck by the clarity of her moral stance. At that moment, the young woman from Narayanpur, Purulia, became more than an award-winning director. She became a voice of a new Indian cinema — feminist, socially rooted, globally conscious, unwilling to be quiet.
Growing Up in Purulia: A Grandmother’s Unseen River
Anuparna Roy was born in 1994 in Narayanpur, a small village in Purulia district, known more for its coal mines and harsh terrain than for art. Her father, Brahmananda Roy, worked in the coal sector. Her mother, Manisha Roy, was a homemaker. The family had modest means, and their life revolved around the rhythms of labour and survival. But what shaped young Anuparna’s imagination most deeply was not material wealth, but her grandmother’s stories.
Her grandmother had been married at the age of nine to a man much older than she. Childhood disappeared into household work and obligations. Yet she told her granddaughter tales of rivers, beauty, and landscapes she had never seen. Later, Anuparna realised many of those images were imagined, conjured by a woman who longed for a freedom she had been denied. In interviews, Roy often recalls how her grandmother, despite never having travelled far, painted vivid pictures of places, skies, and waters. These invented rivers became part of her own cinematic landscape.
The grandmother’s life also exposed her to the brutalities of patriarchy. Married too young, silenced by expectations, and yet finding small ways to dream, she represented the paradoxes of countless Indian women. “My grandmother was married at nine. That stayed with me,” Roy told The Times of India. “She never had the freedom she imagined. Yet she built worlds in her head. That shaped me.”
Equally formative were Roy’s experiences with caste discrimination. As a child, she had a Dalit friend, Jhuma, who suddenly disappeared from her life because her father forbade the friendship. Later, she came to understand the violence of exclusion. In Songs of Forgotten Trees, Jhuma reappears as a haunting absence, a lost friend whose memory shapes the protagonists. The grandmother’s imagined rivers and Jhuma’s silenced presence became intertwined threads in Roy’s cinema: memory, loss, imagination, and sisterhood.
Literature and Self-Education
Roy’s formal education was in English literature. She studied at Kulti College under Burdwan University, earning an honours degree. Literature opened her up to voices as varied as those of Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay, James Joyce, and Toni Morrison. Reading shaped her sense of narrative and her awareness of the silences between words. She later pursued mass communication, but unlike many celebrated directors, she never attended a film school.
This absence became both a struggle and a strength. She did not have institutional networks or mentorship. She did not learn the technical grammar of cinema in classrooms. Instead, she learned by doing. She shot short films, self-funded projects, wrote and rewrote scripts, observed people, and honed her sense of the cinematic by listening, watching, and reading.
“I don’t think filmmaking can be taught only in classrooms,” she told the Indian Express. “For me, literature was my film school. And life itself.”
The Struggle for Survival
Roy’s path to cinema was far from smooth. After college, she moved to Delhi and Mumbai, taking up a series of precarious jobs: in call centres, in sales, in IT. Each job barely sustained her. Filmmaking seemed a luxury, almost impossible. Her parents were anxious. They often asked her to settle, to stop changing jobs, to stop chasing something so uncertain. Once, they asked half-seriously, “Do you think you will become Satyajit Ray?” Her reply was quiet but firm: she could never be Ray, but she could not abandon her path.
To fund her short films, she sacrificed comfort. In Mumbai, she sold her television set to raise money. She lived in small shared apartments. She worked night shifts, saved money, and poured it into projects that few saw. These sacrifices, however, built her resilience. They also made her deeply aware of the economic realities of creative labour, a theme that recurs in her films, where characters are often migrants, workers, or those on the margins of cities.
Her short films, including Run to the River, were deeply personal. Inspired by her grandmother’s life, Run to the River examined the intersections of marriage, desire, and absence. Although these films did not bring her immediate fame, they sharpened her craft. Each project was a rehearsal in persistence.
The Making of Songs of Forgotten Trees
By the early 2020s, Roy had written the script for Songs of Forgotten Trees. It was not an easy film to make. Producers hesitated. Its focus on two migrant women in Mumbai, one a sex worker and aspiring actor, the other a call centre employee, seemed too quiet, too unsellable for commercial cinema. Yet Roy persisted. Eventually, with support from independent producers and a small team, the film was shot.
The film, just seventy-seven minutes long, is a study of intimacy and survival. It follows Thooya (Naaz Shaikh), who sublets her flat and supplements her income through sex work, and Swetha (Sumi Baghel), who arrives in Mumbai to work in a call centre. Initially wary of each other, they gradually form a bond. The flat they share becomes both a prison and a sanctuary. Outside, the city hums indifferently. Inside, two women negotiate silence, trust, and care.
Critics have praised the film’s restraint. The Observer noted its “melodic structure of silences,” pointing out how Roy’s camera lingers in shared spaces, capturing glances, hesitations, and unspoken grief. The Hollywood Reporter admired its subtlety, noting how it avoids melodrama while carrying enormous emotional weight.
Central to the film is the haunting absence of Jhuma, a childhood friend whose memory surfaces in fragments. Jhuma embodies the forgotten, the disappeared, the erased — not only individuals, but entire communities whose stories are rarely told. In one scene, Swetha recalls how Jhuma suddenly stopped meeting her. The silence around her disappearance says more than words could.
Songs of Forgotten Trees is not merely about friendship. It is about sisterhood, about how women share burdens in hostile cities. It is about how absence and silence are as powerful as speech. It is about how agency can emerge in small acts of care. It is, in many ways, a continuation of the grandmother’s unseen river — a story carried forward through imagination, absence, and resilience.
Venice and Global Recognition
When the film premiered in Venice’s Orizzonti section, it drew attention for its freshness. Orizzonti, dedicated to new trends in world cinema, is often the platform where new voices emerge. Roy’s win was historic: she became the first Indian ever to win Best Director in this section.
For Roy, the recognition was overwhelming. Speaking to the Indian Express, she said, “I was nervous, uncertain. I wondered if anyone would connect with my film. But they did. It showed me that stories of migrant women, of survival, of silences, can matter globally.”
The Venice win was not just about prestige. It was about validation. Roy had fought economic precarity, parental doubt, and social resistance. Now, her story has proved that voices from Purulia could stand alongside global cinema.
Her speech at Venice also made headlines. By expressing solidarity with Palestinian children, she positioned herself not just as an artist but as a global citizen. The remark invited both praise and criticism back home. Some questioned why an Indian filmmaker should comment on international politics. Roy’s response was clear: “Speaking for justice does not make me less Indian.” Her courage in using a cinematic platform to speak about global issues underlined her conviction that art and conscience are inseparable.
A Feminist Streak and the New Wave of Indian Cinema
Roy’s cinema is part of a broader shift in Indian filmmaking. Directors like Payal Kapadia, whose A Night of Knowing Nothing won acclaim at Cannes, and others working in independent circuits, are redefining Indian cinema away from Bollywood’s formulas. They are centring women’s lives, marginal voices, caste and class realities.
What distinguishes Roy is her emphasis on sisterhood and female intimacy. Her characters are not victims alone. They negotiate survival, assert agency, and form bonds with one another. In Songs of Forgotten Trees, Thooya and Swetha share not just a flat but an emotional lifeline. Their companionship challenges patriarchal structures by showing how women sustain one another.
Roy also insists on portraying sex work with dignity, stripping it of sensationalism. By showing Thooya as a complex character — actor, daughter, survivor, she refuses to reduce her to a stereotype. This feminist approach is not academic but organic, drawn from her lived experiences and observations.
Grandmother’s Legacy: Stories that Shape Cinema
Again and again, Roy returns to her grandmother in interviews. The grandmother’s life, her child marriage, her unfulfilled desires, her imagined rivers — all recur in Roy’s imagination. In Run to the River, she directly engages with her grandmother’s story. In Songs of Forgotten Trees, the theme of absence, of longing, of women building worlds within silence, echoes that legacy.
The grandmother’s partnership with her stepdaughter, raising the household together after the grandfather’s death, also influenced Roy. She saw how women built alternative bonds of care outside normative roles. These experiences seep into her cinema, where female companionship becomes central.
For Roy, the grandmother represents not just personal memory but a cultural archive. Women like her, silenced by patriarchy, have left behind oral histories, fragments, and images. By turning them into cinema, Roy ensures they are not forgotten.
Critics’ Reception and the Weight of Silence
The reception to Songs of Forgotten Trees in Venice and beyond has been striking. Critics highlighted its refusal of melodrama, its patient silences, and its evocation of absence. The Observer called it “a melodic structure of silences.” Screen Daily described it as “fragile and fearless, balancing tenderness with urgency.”
These responses underline Roy’s unique voice. In a cinematic landscape often dominated by noise, spectacle, and plot, her commitment to silence is radical. Silence in her films is not emptiness but density. It carries grief, memory, and possibility.
Advice to Young Filmmakers and Writers
For Roy, her Venice triumph is not just personal. She sees it as an encouragement for others. Speaking to Times of India, she said: “If you are writing a script but not able to finish it, or you don’t have a producer, you are still a filmmaker. Don’t give up. Believe in your dream.”
Her advice is rooted in her own struggle. She knows what it means to work odd jobs, to be doubted, to sell possessions. She insists that persistence matters. That even unfinished scripts are acts of courage. Believing in one’s voice is the first step.
Conclusion: A Song Remembered
Anuparna Roy’s journey from Purulia to Venice is not a fairy tale. It is a story of grit, sacrifice, and vision. It is about a grandmother who imagined rivers she never saw, and a granddaughter who turned those rivers into cinema. It is about two migrant women in Mumbai whose quiet companionship became a song heard across the world.
Her win is also a milestone in Bengal’s luminous film history. From Ray to Ghatak, Aparna Sen to Rituparno Ghosh, Bengal has given Indian cinema voices of depth. Now, with Anuparna Roy, Bengal has given the world a filmmaker who carries forward that legacy in her own voice, rooted in feminism, global justice, and the insistence that no story, no song, should be forgotten.
As the applause faded in Venice that September evening, one could imagine her grandmother’s unseen river flowing quietly through the hall. Its waters, imagined decades ago in Purulia, had finally found their course.