Anuparna Roy’s directorial debut follows two women sharing a cramped apartment while confronting relationships, work and male entitlement
MUMBAI: First-time director Anuparna Roy explores female companionship, social restrictions and economic pressures in Songs of Forgotten Trees, a restrained drama centred on two women sharing a small Mumbai apartment.
Naaz Shaikh plays Thooya, an actor who also works part-time as a sex worker. She lives in an apartment belonging to her client Nitin, played by Bushan Shimpi, an arrangement that draws hostility from neighbours.
However, Thooya largely ignores their disapproval and rents the apartment’s second bedroom to Shweta, portrayed by Sumi Baghel. Shweta works remotely for an IT call centre and initially struggles to understand her unconventional roommate.
An Unlikely Relationship Gradually Develops
At first, awkwardness defines their interactions. Gradually, however, the two women develop an emotional intimacy that becomes the film’s central focus.
Roy leaves the exact nature of their relationship deliberately uncertain, particularly during an ambiguous final scene that allows viewers to interpret their closeness as friendship or romance.
Meanwhile, both characters carry different expectations about relationships. Shweta searches for a husband through a matchmaking website, while Thooya remains haunted by memories of a school friend who was married at 13 and disappeared from her life.
Male Entitlement Shapes Women’s Experiences
The film also examines male entitlement through the women’s professional and personal experiences.
Shweta initially disapproves of sex work. However, Thooya challenges her assumptions, arguing that marriage can also impose expectations of sexual availability on women.
Furthermore, Thooya grows exhausted by clients and their demands, while Shweta encounters similarly demanding men through her call-centre job.
Rather than relying on a complex plot, Songs of Forgotten Trees builds its narrative through quiet conversations, fleeting emotions and everyday experiences.
Consequently, Roy uses the cramped apartment as both a physical setting and a metaphor for the limited choices available to women navigating contemporary urban society.
