Anuparna Roy grew up in a village in Bengal’s Purulia district, studied English literature, switched to mass communications, worked in a call centre in Delhi and then moved to Mumbai to work as an information technology sales executive. Throughout her journey, one constant element was the ambition to make a film.

Roy had no formal training in filmmaking. The only movie theatre during her formative years was several kilometres away from her village – which she wasn’t allowed to visit. Instead, Roy devoured pirated Indian and foreign films on her laptop. The world of cinema came into her computer. Now, she is taking her own contribution to cinema to the world.

Roy’s debut feature, Songs of Forgotten Trees, will be premiered at the prestigious Venice Film Festival which gets underway from August 27. The multi-lingual movie revolves around two migrant women sharing an apartment in Mumbai. The bond between Thooya, an aspiring actress who turns tricks on the side, and Shweta, an IT sales executive, grows within the walls of the apartment and along its corridors.

Although Thooya and Shweta are quite unlike each other, they find their paths and personalities converging. As they cook meals together and swap stories, a sisterhood develops between the flatmates that Roy calls “platonic love”.

A shot of trees swaying in the wind is followed by a montage of buildings that stand in for the nature that both women have left behind in their quest for better prospects in the big city. Debjit Samanta’s camera moves through the rooms that either woman inhabits and the spaces that they share.

The device of mirroring emerges through the flow of scenes and visual cues, rather than expository dialogue. “I was trying to understand the complexity of the relationship of a woman with another woman,” Roy explained. “I wanted to focus on a space that has a bigger existence than the people staying inside it.”

Roy’s screenplay is deeply autobiographical but also based on her observations after she moved to Mumbai in 2022, she told Scroll. Certain aspects of the script, such as Thooya’s memory of her school friend Jhuma who was scorned by Thooya’s father, and Thooya’s complicated feelings towards her father, were present in Roy’s life too.

“I realised when I was around 22 or so that I had been carrying Jhuma in my head,” Roy said. “There was also a constant fear that I would not be able to forgive my father, even though he is a great human being and we have a good relationship.”

After Roy moved to Mumbai, she learnt about struggling actresses taking to sex work for survival – which finds reflection in Thooya, whose landlord Nitin (Bhushan Shimpi) is her principal client. Roy treats Thooya with empathy, using the character’s choices as an opportunity to look at the men who visit Thooya.

“The idea of writing about a sex worker or something on this subject itself was new to me,” said 29-year-old Roy, who has previously directed the short film Run to the River (2023). “I had been hearing about women with what are called sugar daddies. The struggle I had was that I didn’t want to show the woman’s skin, like in Bollywood or Hollywood films. So I decided to showcase the skin of the man. I wanted to break that male gaze thing.”

The point about Thooya – which is also reflected somewhat in Shweta as well as in Nitin’s wife – is the crisis over sexual identity, Roy added. “I wanted to explore the idea of detachment that women feel towards sex.”

Thooya gets into trouble with her neighbours because of her clients’ visits. Roy faced something similar when she decided to film Songs of Forgotten Trees in her own apartment in suburban Mumbai. The building society wasn’t happy with the shoot, and had Roy evicted on the last day of production.

“This too found its way into the film – I added scenes because of what happened to me,” Roy said. “The circumstances surprised me and led me into different directions from that I had initially planned.”

A bunch of companies has backed the 77-minute indie film. Roy was determined to make Songs of Forgotten Trees despite funding challenges – “I wasn’t able to hold the story anymore,” she said.

Like Roy is newish to the game of filmmaking, so are the film’s female leads. Naaz Shaikh, who plays Thooya, and Sumi Baghel, who portrays Shweta, are aspiring actresses whom Roy met during the casting process.

“We had a workshop for a few months in the same apartment – we lived together for a while to understood the complexity as well as of the flaws of the script,” Roy said.

The Venice selection was a bolt out of the blue for Roy. Of the 19 titles in the competitive Orrizonti (Horizons) category, Songs of Forgotten Trees is the only one from India.

“I never thought my film would be in Venice – I am still a student of cinema,” Roy said. “I am so grateful that the selectors understood the essence of the film, and that it is very personal. I am super-happy.”

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