Anuparna Roy Wins Best Director Award at Venice Film Festival, Highlights Plight of Palestinian Children
New Delhi: At the 82nd Venice Film Festival, debutant filmmaker Anuparna Roy created history by winning the best director award in the Orizzonti section for her feature Songs of Forgotten Trees.
After Roy accepted the award, she delivered an emotional speech, drawing attention of those present at the ceremony to the plight of the children in Palestine.
“I want to take a moment and talk about something which is very bigger and very disastrous happening in Palestine. Every child deserves peace, freedom, liberation and Palestine is no exception. I don’t want any clap for this. It’s a responsibility to think for a moment to stand beside Palestine. I might upset my country but it doesn’t matter to me anymore,” said Roy, during her acceptance speech on September 6.
Later, Roy, who is from Purulia in West Bengal, said that she felt as a global citizen she must speak for the problems and sufferings of people.
“The Palestine issue is a global crisis where a powerful country like Israel is destroying justice, peace and lives. It is shameful. As a global citizen, I must speak about these problems and suffering. I had a microphone and couldn’t restrain myself from addressing it,” Roy told Times of India from Venice.
Roy termed her win as a triumph for Purulia.
“It’s a victory for the faith of people and for Rangamati. I want to thank my camera crew, including Debjit Samanta, Sakyadeb Chowdhury, Debjit Banerjee, Rohit Raj, Harsh Patel, Aditya Pandit, Pradeep Vignavelu, Anjali Mulge and Aditya Raj,” said Roy.
The protagonist Songs of Forgotten Trees is a sex worker and aspiring actor in Mumbai whose sugar daddy provides her with an apartment. Thereafter she sublets the living room to another migrant woman from north India.
“My film also shows how these two women are stuck in the same routine of a straight, male-dominated society. They are not able to express their true feelings for each other until they clearly see how the world around them is like a closed circle, built and controlled by men. In cinema, we women are rarely seen as we are. Instead, we are often sugar-coated through the male gaze, packaged, labelled, and filtered through imposed political, religious, and social frameworks. My film resists that. It attempts to reclaim the space where women exist not as symbols, metaphors, or vessels of ideologies, but as themselves,” Roy told the newspaper.
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