Sawt Falasteen - Indian filmmaker Anuparna Roy: blocked at home, feted in Europe

"Songs of Forgotten Trees" from Roy, just 28, picked up the best director prize in the secondary Horizons section of the festival in 2025 and she is back in the Italian city this week with a follow-up.

But her joy at returning to one of the world's most prestigious film events has been tempered by a decision from India's powerful film board to block distribution of her first feature.

"A few days back, they called us and they said that it's a 'threat to society'. Can you believe that 'Songs of Forgotten Trees' is a threat to society?" Roy told AFP this week.

"I am terribly upset about the censorship," she said, adding: "I represented the country here, I won for the country."

"Songs of Forgotten Trees" is a tender story about friendship, featuring two migrant women who share an apartment in Mumbai, one a part-time sex worker, the other a call centre employee.

The film's difficulties mirror those of the more overtly political "Santosh", by British-Indian director Sandhya Suri, which won critical acclaim after premiering at the Cannes Film Festival in France in 2024, only to fall foul of the censors.

That movie shone a light on sexism, religious discrimination and corruption in the Indian police, as well as the treatment of lower-caste people.

- Pressure -

Roy is back in Venice with her second film "Lovers of the Blue Night", which also strays into sensitive territory, depicting Bangladeshi migrants struggling with poverty, grief and their sexuality in Mumbai, previously known as Bombay.

"My aim was to showcase a different Bombay because all the beautiful pictures (films) in Bombay have already been made," Roy told AFP ahead of the premiere on Friday.

It is competing for prizes in the Horizons section, which offers a platform for up-and-coming filmmakers. Winners will be announced on Saturday.

Roy sees the space in India for independent filmmakers as being limited, partly due to the dominance of mass-market Bollywood fare in cinemas, as well as political pressure.

"It's good for those who can praise the government and make a propaganda film. I am not somebody who can do that," she said.

She also worries that her statements in support of Palestinian rights might explain her problems with the film board.

India's Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) vets film releases and has the power to demand cuts and edits, as well as ban distribution.

Although censorship has a long history in the world's biggest democracy, the Hindu nationalist government of Narendra Modi is seen by rights groups and other critics as clamping down further since coming to power in 2014.

- Lightning rise -

Roy is part of a new generation of female Indian directors that includes Payal Kapadia whose "All We Imagine As Light" in 2024 was another Cannes festival and international success story.

Roy is largely self-taught, having learned the art of filmmaking from friends and mentors.

Only a few years ago, she was working in a New Delhi call centre having moved from her family home in Purulia, a coal-producing area of West Bengal state in eastern India.

Since relocating to Mumbai in 2023, she has found the pulsing energy and grinding hardship of the place nicknamed "Maximum City" to be a rich source of inspiration.

The challenge for her is to bring out empathy for her subjects.

"My mentors guide me and they continuously told me that no language of sympathy should come out, an exaggeration of poverty, romanticising poverty," she added.

"It's easy to sell poverty to Europe, right? It's a continuous struggle."

P.Tamimi--SF-PST