Anuparna Roy won the Best Director award in the Orizzonti (Horizons) section of the 82nd Venice Film Festival for her debut feature film, Songs of Forgotten Trees. The film was presented by Anurag Kashyap.
Anuparna Roy, who was born in West Bengal's Purulia is the first Indian director to win Best Director in the Orizzonti section, which focuses on new trends in cinema, and spotlights emerging names.
"I want to thank Anurag Kashyap, my producers, the cast, the crew, and everyone who stood by a film that didn’t fit into easy boxes. Each one there in my hometown, in my country, I want to dedicate this award to them. I want to thank Celluloid Films who showing faith in the film. I want to thank my DoP, the 80-year-old gaffer Debjit Banerjee… each one of you was amazing,” Anuparna said while accepting the award.
Songs of Forgotten Trees follows the lives of two migrant women who cross paths in unexpected ways. The film stars Naaz Shaikh, Sumi Baghel, Bhushan Shimpi, Ravi Maan, and Lovely Singh.
The film follows an aspiring actor named Thooya who sublets her 'sugar daddy'’s upscale apartment to Swetha, a corporate worker. Roy revealed in a recent interview that the project stems from the memory of a friend who got married and disappeared from her life.
“To translate that personal memory into a universal narrative, I focused less on the event itself and more on the emotional undercurrents: loss, silence and the way certain people vanish from our lives without closure," Roy shared in a recent interview.
According to reports, Roy completed Songs of Forgotten Trees in 2024; the film was a self-funded project that she made while juggling a corporate career in Mumbai. Her directorial debut short, Run to the River, was also a success at festivals such as Cheboksary and Stuttgart, and won Best Short Film at the Sthree Film Festival in Chennai.
Anuparna Roy hails from Narayanpur, a small village in Purulia, West Bengal and she studied British English Literature from Burdwan University. Reports claim she started her career as an assistant director on short films.
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