September 10, 2025 07:21 AM IST First published on: Sep 10, 2025 at 07:21 AM ISTEmphasising the need to take cinema to the hearts of the common people, Ritwick Ghatak once said, “We need to take mobile vans to villages to exhibit cinema.” Decades later, a young woman from a village would reverse the journey — she would carry a story from rural Bengal to Venice, marking a historic moment for Indian cinema. On September 7, Anuparna Roy became the first Indian to receive the best director award in the Orizzonti section at the 82nd Venice Film Festival for her debut feature Songs of Forgotten Trees. In that moment, she embodied a rarely recognised fact: Some spaces still celebrate films “which are not fitted into the boxes”.Roy’s film, a tale of two migrant women in Mumbai — one an aspiring actor and part-time sex worker and the other, a call centre employee looking for a suitable groom — echoes her own journey from Purulia district’s Narayanpur village to Mumbai, a city of unfulfilled aspirations. Her lived experience, understanding of the anxieties of migrants, and the complexities of urban lives shaped her storytelling. Coming from a place where “girls are married off early, given rations instead of books in government institutes”, with the memory of her friend Jhooma, who was married at 13 under a state scheme, only to be “vanished” thereafter, Roy has stood against such erasure — silencing of these women and their aspirations.AdvertisementRoy’s is not selective solidarity. She stood by Palestine on a global stage: “Every child deserves peace, freedom, liberation, and Palestinians are no exception… It’s a responsibility at the moment to stand by Palestine.” When she was a teenager, her parents would discourage Roy from pursuing her dreams due to the uncertainties associated with the filmmaker’s profession. They would ask: “Will you become another Satyajit Ray?” Perhaps, she will. Perhaps not. She has, however, already made her mark as Anuparna Roy.