Venice Film Festival: How Anuparna Roy and Lovers in the Blue Night turn escape into art
Indian filmmaker Anuparna Roy is returning to the Venice Film Festival for the second consecutive year with her film 'Lovers in the Blue Night'. Her work focuses on the lives of migrants on the margins of Mumbai, drawing inspiration from Asian cinema.
Why it matters
Roy's success marks a significant achievement for Indian independent cinema on the global stage.
Three years ago, Anuparna Roy fled the trappings of an impending marriage and left her Narayanpur village in Bengal’s Purulia to go study and work in call centres in Mumbai. The city now serves as the cinematic canvas for the self-taught director-screenwriter’s personal stories of migration and loss.
If her 2025 debut feature Songs of the Forgotten Trees follows a migrant aspiring actress and part-time sex worker sharing a rented Mumbai apartment and forming an intimate bond (which travelled to the Venice International Film Festival), 2026’s Lovers in the Blue Night traces the entangled lives of four migrants on the city’s margins: a closeted gay husband, his lonely wife, a thief and a pimp.
Karim (Pritam Pilania) and Amina (Neelima Sharma) in a still from Lovers in the Blue Night. | Photo Credit: Special arrangement
Get smarter about the news
Sign up free for a feed built around what you actually care about, Dive Deeper research on any story, and the full text of every article.
Create free accountAlready have an account? Sign in