A year after becoming the first Indian filmmaker to win the Best Director prize in Venice's Orizzonti (Horizons) section, Anuparna Roy is heading back to Venice — and this time, she's not alone in the spotlight for long. Her sophomore feature, Lovers in the Blue Night, has been selected for the Orizzonti Competition at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival, making her one of the rare Indian filmmakers to land back-to-back features in competition at the festival.
Anuparna's 2025 breakout, Songs of Forgotten Trees, was an intimate two-hander built under tight funding constraints. Her new film widens the aperture considerably, following four characters whose lives collide across Mumbai's restless nights: a husband hiding his sexuality from his family, his wife who works nights at a bar and longs to be truly seen, a small-time thief, and a man who trades in sex work. Shot in Hindi with threads of Sylheti Bengali and Marathi, the film is billed as an exploration of longing, migration and identity in a city that offers its most vulnerable residents little room to be vulnerable.
Anuparna has said the film grew out of her own experience as a migrant, watching working-class lives get pulled into the churn of the city. She's traced part of its origin to a childhood memory: a bonded labourer named Ameena who lived within her own household growing up, whose story became one of the seeds for the film. It's a through-line she's described as central to her filmmaking instinct — work that sits at the intersection of the deeply personal and the political.
Speaking about the shift in scale between her two films, Anuparna has said the production this time felt far more professional, with real deadlines and constraints she's still learning to navigate — a contrast to the more improvisational conditions that shaped her debut.
Lovers in the Blue Night reunites much of the creative and producing team from Songs of Forgotten Trees. Vikas Kumar of Khan & Kumar Media (known for Aarya and Kaala Paani) and Sharib Khan produce, alongside returning collaborators Bibhanshu Rai and Romil Modi. The team has expanded internationally for this outing, adding U.S.-based producer Rhet Topham and executive producer Beesham Sreecharan, along with London-based associate producer Amar Singh, joining executive producer Neeraj Churi. Cinematographer Debjit Samanta, editor Ketul Thakkar and composer Nishant Ramtake round out the key creative crew. The ensemble cast includes Neelima Sharma, Pritam Pilania, Bhushan Shimpi, Jatin Sarin, Kajal Keshav and Vinod Suryavanshi.
International sales have already been boarded by Parallax, which acquired rights ahead of the film's world premiere in the Horizons competition. The company's Liuying Cao pointed to the film's restraint as its biggest strength, noting that its power comes from subtle, quiet moments rather than dramatic gestures — and said Parallax hopes to stay with Anuparna for the projects that follow.
For more updates, join/follow our WhatsApp, Telegram and YouTube channels.