The Orizzonti title marks Roy’s second consecutive Venice award, following her Best Director win for her debut feature ‘Songs of Forgotten Trees’ in 2025~

Venice: Anuparna Roy’s Lovers in the Blue Night, produced by Khan & Kumar Media, has won the NETPAC Award for Best Asian Film at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival, where the film competed in the Orizzonti section.

The award marks another significant milestone in Roy’s rapidly emerging international career. The filmmaker made her Venice debut in 2025 with her first feature, Songs of Forgotten Trees, for which she won the Orizzonti Award for Best Director. With Lovers in the Blue Night, Roy returns to Venice a year later and leaves with her second award at the festival.

The NETPAC jury recognised the film for its sensitive portrayal of marginalised lives in Mumbai, describing it as a “delicately sensitive vision of the intersecting lives of migrant workers” and praising Roy’s “confident voice” and the film’s “cohesively nuanced” exploration of displacement, urban survival, hidden desire, gender, poverty and class.

The film is in Hindi, Sylheti Bengali and Marathi

Set against Mumbai’s restless underbelly, Lovers in the Blue Night brings together four lives shaped by migration, loneliness and survival — a closeted husband and his unhappy wife who works in a bar, a lonely man involved in sex work, and a petty criminal navigating fleeting desires. Their lives intersect to form an intimate portrait of people living on the margins of a city that never quite allows them to belong.

Anuparna Roy, Director, says, “Winning the NETPAC Award means a lot to me because this film comes from a very personal place. These are characters and lives that are often pushed to the margins or looked at without really being seen. I wanted to approach them with tenderness, dignity and honesty. To receive this recognition at Venice, a year after my debut was awarded here, is deeply moving. I’m grateful that the film has found a space with the audience and jury.”

Vikas Kumar, Producer, Khan & Kumar Media added,“An award like this is deeply meaningful because it recognises not just a film, but the sensitivity, courage, and conviction with which it has been made. Lovers in the Blue Night asks us to look closely at lives that are often pushed to the margins, and to recognise the humanity, desire, and dignity within them. Anuparna Roy has made a film of remarkable emotional and cinematic confidence, and it has been a privilege for us at Khan & Kumar Media to support her vision.”

Lovers in the Blue Night is produced by Khan & Kumar Media, with Vikas Kumar, Sharib Khan, Bibhanshu Rai,  Romil Modi and Rhet Topham as producers. Neeraj Churi and Beesham A. Seecharan serves as Executive Producer and Navin Shetty as Co-Producer.

About the Director

Anuparna Roy is a filmmaker and writer from Narayanpur, Purulia, West Bengal. A graduate in English Literature from Kulti College, she made her feature debut with Songs Of Forgotten Trees, which premiered in the Orizzonti section of the 82nd Venice International Film Festival, where she won the Best Director Award, becoming the first Indian filmmaker to receive the honour. 

The film went on to screen at major international festivals including the BFI London Film Festival, Hong Kong Asian Film Festival, Cork International Film Festival and Lisboa Film Festival, earning accolades including the FIPRESCI Award for Best Screenplay and the Audience Award at Cork. 

About Khan & Kumar Media and Ammi Media

Khan & Kumar Media is a Mumbai based independent film production company founded by actor Vikas Kumar, in creative partnership with Ammi Media, a New York based indie film company founded by tech entrepreneur Sharib Khan.

Their debut short film, Sonsi, won a National Film Award (Best Cinematography – non feature section) and qualified for Oscars 2022. 

Their debut feature film, Songs Of Forgotten Trees, had its world premiere in the Orizzonti section at the Venice Film Festival, 2025, and won Anuparna Roy the ‘Best Director’ award. 

Most recently, The Ink Stained Hand And The Missing Thumb, premiered at Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, Hunter’s Moon, at Shanghai International Film Festival, and their debut docu-feature, Going Solo, at Mumbai International Film Festival. They were also Executive Producers on the 2026 Oscar qualifying short film, Holy Curse. 

With a growing slate of shorts, documentaries, and feature films in production, Khan & Kumar Media continues to champion bold, original voices.

Producer’s Note 

Our first collaboration with Anupurna Roy on Songs of Forgotten Trees gave us a close understanding of the clarity and integrity of her voice as a filmmaker. Watching that film go on to premiere at Venice and earn the Orizzonti Best Director award only reinforced what we already knew – that Anupurna is a filmmaker of remarkable sensitivity and conviction.

With Lovers In The Blue Night, she returns with a story that is intimate, urgent, and deeply humane. We are drawn not only to the film’s exploration of migration, invisibility, and longing, but to its belief that love and desire can become quiet acts of resistance in a world that often denies people dignity. 

As producers, we are drawn to stories that are rooted in a specific world yet resonate universally. Lovers in the Blue Night is set within the margins of Mumbai’s nightscape, but its emotional core – the need to be seen, to be loved, to belong – transcends geography. 

Supporting this project is also a continuation of a creative partnership built on trust. We believe in Anupurna’s restrained, empathetic filmmaking and in her ability to create cinema that invites reflection rather than offering easy answers.

Crew

Screenwriter: Anuparna Roy

Cinematographer: Debjit Samanta

Editor: Ketul Thakkar

Production Designer: Karan Gupta

Sound Recording, Design & Mix: Arka Dey

Music: Nishant Ramtake

Costume Designer: Muskan Mittal

Make-Up: Bashir Shaikh

Vfx: Nube Studios