In film ‘Songs of Forgotten Trees’, the sisterhood between two women who share a flat

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...

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