Anuparna Roy’s award-winning film Songs of Forgotten Trees has been selected as the closing film for the 11th edition of the Indian Film Festival of Sydney (IFFS), the organisers announced on Friday.
The film, which recently earned Roy the prestigious Orizzonti Award for best director at the 2025 Venice International Film Festival, will have its Australian premiere at the festival’s closing night on October 12.
Festival director Mitu Lange said the selection of Roy’s film was a fitting finale to the festival’s milestone edition.
“We could not have imagined a more perfect closing for our 11th anniversary edition. Songs of Forgotten Trees embodies everything we at IFFS stand for cinema that moves, provokes, and heals. Anuparna Roy has created a cinematic poem that resonates universally, yet speaks deeply to our cultural roots. We are overwhelmed to have had the honour of presenting its Australian premiere,” she said in a statement.
Starring Naaz Shaikh and Sumi Baghel in the lead roles, Songs of Forgotten Trees follows the relationship between two migrant women in Mumbai. According to the film’s official synopsis, the story revolves around Thooya, a migrant and aspiring actress, who survives the city by leveraging beauty and wit, occasionally trading intimacy for opportunity.
“When she sublets her sugar daddy’s upscale apartment to Swetha, a fellow migrant working a corporate job, the two women-seemingly from different worlds-begin to share more than just a space. Amid the relentless pulse of Mumbai, they discover a silent empathy. But as personal histories, desires, and wounds resurface, their delicate connection is tested. What follows is not a rupture, but a strange and tender unfolding-of selfhood, of survival, of unexpected kinship,” the synopsis read.
The 11th edition of IFFS kicked off on October 9.