Screening at Venice: Anuparna Roy’s ‘Songs of Forgotten Trees’

A tale of two young female roommates hustling in Mumbai, Songs of Forgotten Trees premiered in the Orizzonti (or Horizons) section at the 82nd Venice Film Festival, where it won debuting filmmaker Anuparna Roy the program’s Best Director trophy. The prize was well-earned; Roy’s approach is melodic and understated, and mines drama from human corners where other storytellers might not think to look.

From the get-go, when Delhi transplant Sweta (Sumi Baghel) makes her way up the stairs of her new abode, Roy’s camera creates spaces of safety and secrecy, peeking around pillars to reveal her roommate Thooya (Naaz Shaikh), a migrant sex worker from India’s eastern border. Thooya is in the throes of a complicated grief—her father, whom she detested, has died, and she reprimands a male acquaintance for inviting her to his funeral—causing Sweta to keep her distance. The newcomer holes up in her scant bedroom of their cramped apartment, where she takes phone calls for an IT call center and uses the name Lisa (if her real name is spoken at all during the film, it’s easy to miss).

Sweta’s observant gaze becomes our window to Thooya’s world, between her casual trysts with regular clients and her less pleasant, less willing encounters with the apartment’s owner, revealing a sordid dynamic. Songs of Forgotten Trees has no overarching plot, at least in the traditional sense, but the transactional nature of the two women’s lives gradually brings them together. Watching them go from cautious strangers to close companions over the film’s mere 77 minutes is a delight, but despite Roy’s reserved camera, her aesthetic complexities are far deeper than meets the eye.

In addition to being an independent sex worker, Thooya is also an aspiring actor. On the first morning after Sweta’s arrival, she overhears Thooya recording an audition tape with slightly stilted delivery—the kind that, strangely, applies to nearly every performance on screen. Intentional or not, this rigid, stage-like flourish ends up further emphasizing the duo’s platonic (and occasionally homoerotic) intimacy. Their gradual and mutual comfort allows both Baghel and Shaikh to perform with more naturalism as the film goes on, and as Roy and cinematographer Debjit Samanta capture them in adjoining rooms, as their respective routines begin to sync up in rhythm.

No matter what dialect is spoken (English, Hindi or otherwise), it all feels like a second language, distant and forced. After all, both characters are constantly performing in their daily lives: Sweta follows a call center’s script, while Thooya repeats the words and fantasies her clients demand of her. It’s only far away from the gaze of men that these two women can be themselves and confide in one another. Their secrets seem mundane at first: Sweta is being set up to marry, while Thooya tells her constantly deflecting therapist about an old friend, Jhuma, who disappeared long ago without a trace. However, the more the roommates discuss these personal problems, the more it becomes clear that Roy has more on her mind than just domestic woes.

While the film remains tethered to Sweta and Thooya’s drama (including the occasions when Sweta voices her reservations about the latter’s career), its concerns are structural and thus politically far-reaching. The tale of a lost young friend named Jhuma comes from Roy’s own life, but the lack of closure in the story—and roommates’ playful speculation about what might’ve happened to her—open up innumerable, equally likely possibilities, hinting at the many roads Indian women can be forced to take. One such road lies before Sweta, too, and it’s perhaps what causes her to lash out in Thooya’s direction, adding to the aspersions she already faces.

The film’s montage-like interludes make for an easy hook, but in the process, its most dramatic beats arrive with sickening emotional thuds echoing through quiet, considered moments, making you realize just how much each character is forced to contend with thanks to the cruelty of the world around them. On the surface, one might be tempted to compare Roy to Payal Kapadia, whose 2024 drama All We Imagine As Light—a recent tale of friendship between Mumbai’s migrant women—but Roy’s style is a much closer cousin to Ryusuke Hamaguchi, who western viewers might know from Drive My Car. Her camera is far less steady than Hamaguchi’s (with the purpose of embodying interpersonal tension), but her scenes similarly unfold in lengthy two-shots of characters speaking, and speaking, and speaking, until suddenly, meaning and weight punch through the façade of casual chatter about sex and sexuality (a topic that’s a rarity in Indian cinema).

The movie’s thematic conclusions are a little wordier (and more obvious) than is necessary, with florid dialogue hammering home ideas that have already risen to the surface. But for a first-time filmmaker, this might just be a good problem to have. If anything, Roy’s abundance of caution may stem from her not realizing what an astute visual dramatist she already is, as so few independent debuts out of India arrive with such remarkable emotional force.

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