Songs of Forgotten Trees, the debut feature from director Anuparna Roy, follows a sex worker and a call-centre worker as an uneasy friendship between them slowly deepens inside a cramped Mumbai flat. The film, which runs 77 minutes according to Loud and Clear Reviews, resists a clear resolution, leaving the exact nature of the women's bond open to interpretation right through to its closing scene.
The story centres on Thooya, played by Naaz Shaikh, who works as an actor and part-time sex worker while living in an apartment provided by a client named Nitin, portrayed by Bushan Shimpi. According to Hindustan Times, the flat itself is owned by the man financially supporting Thooya, an arrangement that draws disapproval from neighbours. Undeterred, Thooya takes in a lodger, Shweta, played by Sumi Baghel, who works remotely for an IT call centre. Their initial discomfort with one another gradually gives way to something closer to romantic connection, though the film never states this outright.
What themes does the film explore?
Male entitlement runs through much of the story, surfacing in different forms for each woman. Thooya is worn down by the demands of her clients, while Shweta contends with customers on the other end of her calls, including one man who insists she speak with him every single day. Thooya also carries the memory of a childhood friend who was married off at just 13 years old and never seen again, a loss that appears to shape her wariness. Shweta, meanwhile, is actively searching for a husband through a matchmaking website, despite disapproving of sex work herself. During a shared taxi ride home one night, Thooya remarks with some cynicism that marriage would still obligate Shweta to be sexually available to a husband regardless of her own wishes.
What personal history informs the story?
Roy has said the narrative also reflects Thooya working through grief over her father's death and the aftermath of her mother's abusive relationship, according to The Polis Project. Critics have positioned the film as part of a wider conversation about the lives of lower-middle-class migrant women navigating Mumbai, drawing comparisons to Payal Kapadia's All We Imagine as Light, per The Wire. One review from the British Film Institute notes that the film opens with a montage of Mumbai's housing blocks, filled with shoebox-sized apartments, establishing the social confinement that mirrors the characters' limited choices.
How has the film been received since its premiere?
The film premiered in the Orizzonti section of the 82nd Venice Film Festival, where Roy went on to win the program's Best Director prize, as reported by Observer. It later screened at the 69th BFI London Film Festival, according to The Wire's coverage. These festival showings have brought wider attention to Roy's small-scale, character-driven approach in her first feature-length work.
The apartment setting itself functions almost as a character in the story, its tight corridors and shared kitchen forcing the two women into constant proximity as they cook and move past each other in the narrow hallway. That physical confinement, deliberately built into the design of the space, echoes the broader social restrictions each woman faces outside its walls.
What happens next?
No confirmed date for a wider theatrical or streaming release has been announced, and no further festival screenings beyond London have been reported, according to Loud and Clear Reviews. For now, the film's future distribution remains unclear following its festival run.
Despite its thin plot, the film leans on fleeting, tightly observed moments rather than conventional narrative momentum, an approach that produces flashes of genuine feeling without necessarily leaving a lasting impression once the credits roll.
Key Facts
- Songs of Forgotten Trees is Anuparna Roy's debut feature and runs 77 minutes.
- The film won Roy the Best Director prize in Orizzonti at the 82nd Venice Film Festival.
- It subsequently screened at the 69th BFI London Film Festival.
- The story follows Thooya (Naaz Shaikh) and Shweta (Sumi Baghel) sharing a Mumbai apartment owned by Thooya's client, Nitin (Bushan Shimpi).
- No release date or further screenings have yet been confirmed.
