Vassilis Kroustallis reviews the Venice-premiered film 'Songs of Forgotten Trees' by Anuparna Roy.
"You know how to build a house, but never learn to bring an umbrella when it's drizzling". Indian newcomer director Anuparna Roy, in her film debut, offers a relatively short but effective portrait of two Indian women in a close relationship -extending the ante that opened with Payal Kapadia's 'All We Imagine As Light' in representing contemporary Indian women's predicament, between firmly established conventions and hopes for a new, modernized world.
The intimate film, which world premiered at the 2025 Venice Film Festival (Orizzonti section), is more of a chamber piece set in a Mumbai apartment, where the protagonist is in grave danger of his hydraulics going awry.
Thooya (Naaz Shaikh) and Sweta (Sumi Baghel) are roommates; the film starts with Sweta's POV as a new roommate in a corporate job who has to endure all clients' Internet scolds with an endurance that brings a smile to our eyes. Yet, even though both girls are Bumbai migrants, Thooya's storyline is the most interesting one. Thooya is an aspiring actress (we get a glimpse of improvisational gestures in acting schools, which look authentic and funny); in the meantime, she gets part-time escorting jobs (sex and conversation) from clients who have lost any ordinary connection with their legally married wives. And she doesn't have to pay rent -thanks to the sexual advances she offers to her apartment owner, the shy-cum-dominant Nitin (Bhushan Shimpi).
The film could have easily moved to a criticism of sexual politics; instead, it opts mostly for a light narrative enumeration (and reminder) of past events - especially Thooya's - that actually shaped her current position. Anuparna Roy doesn't delve into fake sympathy; her pickup of remembrances is harsh, only mediated by stills of hollong ('forgotten') trees, a staple in North Eastern India. Like Ozu's films, those still shots make a transition from one film section (sometimes too charged) to the next one.
Yet her observant camera is at best inside the crammed apartment, especially in the scene where the two roommates tend to house chores, both shown at the same time, but having no direct contact with each other. It is as if both girls prepare the prescribed roles society has allocated to them -in isolation.
Women's solidarity is a given in this earnest but somewhat incomplete film, which opens more societal issues than it tends to handle. Yet both the affecting performances and the light directorial touch make for a promising debut that tells truths -instead of conventions.
Vassilis Kroustallis
