Kolkata: Purulia-born filmmaker Anuparna Roy won the NETPAC Award for Best Asian Film at Venice International Film Festival for her Hindi-Sylheti Bengali-Marathi feature film ‘Lovers in the Blue Night’.The recognition establishes her as a leading fixture in contemporary world cinema following her Orizzonti Best Director win for ‘Songs of Forgotten Trees’ at the Venice festival last year.The NETPAC Award is an independent collateral prize presented by an external pan-Asian cultural organisation to promote exceptional Asian cinema.Speaking to TOI from Italy, Roy, who also wrote the script for the film, said, “I am just so happy. It feels like a dream. I am dedicating this win to my team and all the indie filmmakers out there. We can make films!”Parents Brahmananda and Manisha, who live in West Burdwan’s Kulti, are delighted. “She came to Kulti during her birthday in May and spent a week with us. She broke this news over a WhatsApp call from Italy in the morning. We are extremely happy with this recognition. I have watched her first film and am keen to watch this one too,” her mother said.“We come from very middle-class background. Her hard labour and the blessings of everyone have helped her reach this far,” her father added.According to the citation, the film was chosen “For its delicately sensitive vision of the intersecting lives of migrant workers: a closeted husband and his unhappy wife who works in a bar, a lonely man who trades in sex work, and a petty criminal with fleeting desires — forming a mosaic of marginalized lives amidst Mumbai’s restless underbelly. Contemporary realities of displacement, urban survival, and hidden desires intersect with those of gender, poverty, and class, coming to a cohesively nuanced fore in the sophomore work of its director, who follows through with a confident voice, validating the promise of her Orizzonti-winning debut a year before, with pulsating sounds and images that impart a lingering and humanistic imprint.”While the festival praised Roy’s “confident voice”, it also highlighted the auditory and visual brilliance engineered by her key collaborators from Bengal, Arka Dey and Debjit Samanta. “My sound designer, Arka Dey dada, is amazing. He guides me. We decide and lock what will finally be used,” said Roy. Highlighting her long-standing creative synergy with her cinematographer, she said, “Debjit Samanta dada is someone with whom I am familiar working with. So it’s a comfort zone.”Dey, who is in Venice with Roy, described the festival experience as “surreal”. Narrating how he created the film’s “pulsation sound” that was lauded in the citation, the Howrah-born FTII alumnus said, “The idea was to let the outer world’s sounds subtly portray the inner emotions of the characters, without being overpowering.”Although Samanta could not go to Venice due to pressing work meetings, the impact of the win resonated deeply. “As a cinematographer, I want my realistic visual storytelling to blend with the director’s vision. The words in the citation are so beautiful. They carry a sense of positive energy that is enough to keep an artist alive,” he said.Samanta expressed pride that the jury embraced his vision of contrasting two separate worlds within the film: “One was of the chawl that was realistic and grumpy with no stylisation. I made sure the images spoke about the struggles of the migrant workers. The other was the world of the bungalow from where they wonder if there is anything to steal. That world is more stylised and has a warmer palette. I am happy with the jury recognition.”
