How many kilometers from Narayanpur to Venice? Approximately 7000+ kms says the search engine, adding a very interesting note – While the specific location of ‘Narayanpur’ within the Purulia district isn’t precisely defined in the search results, this figure represents the travel distance from Purulia to Venice, based on a filmmaker’s journey from the region to the Venice Film Festival.” Voila, I have my answer! This is how high Anuparna Roy is trending right now.
Dreams Can Travel Incredible Distances
Call it a ‘vision’, ‘goal’, or simply ‘dream’, these are stuff that simply do not care about physical distances. They will transcend any limit and boundary no matter what it takes. Anuparna Roy is probably the latest proof of the fact.
As the first Indian filmmaker to win the Best Director Award in the Orizzonti section at the 82nd Venice Film Festival for her feature debut film, ‘Songs of Forgotten Trees’, this 31-year-old hails from Purulia, a rugged and economically-challenged district of West Bengal. Perched on fringe of the Chota Nagpur plateau, Purulia is located on the western-most border of the state and has faced persistent drought for ages forcing it to adopt a rain-fed agricultural system for sustenance.
Nonetheless, the red- yellow lateritic soil, diverse natural beauty of the tropical savanna landscape, the little tribal villages, flowing river waters of Damodar, Kansabati, and Subarnarekha, and the legends and lore spawned by all this give Purulia its rich cultural environment.
It is here that Anuparna grew up in Narayanpur harbouring dreams of becoming a story-teller in the world of films someday.
Breaking New Grounds and Barriers
It couldn’t have been easy for her as it was a typical Indian middle-class household. At home, they wanted her to finish her education, join a regular government job, and become economically independent. She passed her graduation from the local Kulti Government College with a degree in English Literature and moved to Delhi to pursue a course in Mass Communication. She abandoned it midway to take up a job in the IT sector and shift to Mumbai as she soon realized that Mass Communication wouldn’t be of big help to realize her film-making dream.
Armed with a new job, Anuparna moved to Mumbai convinced that the city would ultimately make her cherished dream come true. The job was simply a safety net to support her financially but her father occasionally sent her money, as he says, to tide over challenging months.
In early 2022, she started writing ‘Songs of Forgotten Trees’ and watching the film grow little by little, at first only in her head, and then in real time.
Songs of Forgotten Trees – The Film
In 2022, Roy started writing Songs of Forgotten Trees. She had a job in Mumbai that would pay enough for her to rent an apartment. Once she got a proper one, the passion to make her first regular feature film took firmer roots. A whole year went by putting things together and finding out if they could shoot within the residential society. Then, she began filming at the end of 2023.
Since they were not entirely sure of how the society would react, the film was shot secretly inside the apartment. Mumbai is a bewitching city with nameless countless thronging there to realize their dreams. The film brings together many elements that are quintessentially Mumbai. There’s an aspiring actor Thooya (played by Naaz Shaikh) who does sex work on the side to pay her bills. Thooya sublets the flat (which is not hers but belongs to her “sugar daddy,” who is also her main client) to an IT sales executive, Shweta (played by Sumi Baghel).
The two migrant women inhabit starkly different worlds and hardly interact at first. Then, over time, a bonding grows between them as they gradually begin to understand one another and their thoughts, compulsions, and misgivings about life. The film shows the complexities of the characters and new-age relationships in a delicate and nuanced way as the women go through remembering and forgetting, coming close and drifting away.
Says Anuparna Roy, “We underwent a workshop for three months where the three of us lived in the apartment where the film was shot to understand the intricacies of modern-day relationships,” says Roy.
Making A Mark in International Film Circuit
Anupriya Roy is one of several Indian women who have made their mark in the international film circuit. In fact, a few have also bagged major awards and been felicitated by international audiences for their work. With her win, Roy joins the small but exclusive club of Indian women filmmakers raising their flags in the international circuit. There’s Payal Kapadia, who won the Golden Eye for A Night of Knowing Nothing, 2021, and the Grand Prix for All We Imagine as Light, 2024, in Cannes; Shuchi Talati, winner of Sundance 2024 Audience Award for her film Girls Will Be Girls, Varsha Bharath, winner of Rotterdam 2025 NETPAC Award for Bad Girl; Diwa Shah, winner of the San Sebastián International Film Festival Kutxabank New Director’s Award 2023 for Bahadur – The Brave.
Anuparna Roy’s a Name!
Her parents in Kulti are immensely proud of her today and rightly so. Initially, they had grave misgivings when she wanted to take up filmmaking as a profession. As a regular middle-class family in a very small town, they knew practically nothing about it and were concerned. “How would she sustain herself in the long run as she was spending all her hard-earned salary on the film?” wondered her father. Both parents wished she had a humdrum job as a government employee in a small, nondescript office. They would be relieved with that.
Today, as accolades keep pouring in from everywhere with even the Governor and Chief Minister of West Bengal sending congratulatory messages for her, the duo is hugely elated and waiting for her to return home. Meantime, the phone buzzing again. It’s someone congratulating the family in Purulia and their girl who has gone places.
With inputs by Neha Karmakar
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