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In ‘Lovers in the Blue Night’, the ‘constant search for identity’ on the margins of the big city

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Anuparna Roy first visited Venice in 2025 when her debut feature Songs of Forgotten Trees was showing in the Orrizonti section of the city’s reputed annual international film festival. Her film won the Best Director award – a feat no Indian filmmaker had achieved before. This year, the 30-year-old director is back in Venice with her second feature, Lovers in the Blue Night.

Her chronicle of four working-class migrants in Mumbai is in the Orizzonti category again at Venice (September 2-12). Lovers in the Blue Night has also been selected for the Busan International Film Festival (October 6-15).

The multi-lingual drama is in Hindi, Sylheti Bengali and Marathi. Roy’s screenplay follows Ameena, Karim, Sukka and Omran as they navigate survival, identity, desire and sexuality.

While Ameena (Neelima Sharma) works at a phone sex call centre, her husband Karim (Pritam Pilania) kills rats for the municipality. Karim gets involved with the thief Sukka (Bhushan Shimpi). Omrun (Jatin Sarin) is a pimp at Ameena’s workplace.

“I have always wanted to write something about the sexual complexities between two men,” Roy told Scroll. “I also wanted to write characters inside a Mumbai slum who are caught in the bog, in the illusion of love.”

Ameena was directly inspired by a maid of the same name who worked in Roy’s...