Anupama Chopra

Jugnuma (The Fable) begins with a startling unbroken shot in which a seemingly ordinary morning turns extraordinary. Within a few minutes, writer and director Raam Reddy establishes the contours of this world and primes us to expect enchantment and mystery. The story is set in the spring of 1989 on a vast estate in the Himalayas. Men tend to beautiful, bountiful fruit orchards which spread over three mountains. But underneath the mundane – the owner Dev (played by Manoj Bajpayee) and his family, his manager Mohan (played by Deepak Dobriyal), the workers spraying pesticides to make the yield better – is a beguiling and wondrous world of fireflies, nomads who don’t speak but who exert some sort of benign power and a fable about fairies who live on earth because they don’t realise that this isn’t really their home.

Songs of Forgotten Trees is a clear-eyed, restrained, moving story of two young women, lonely and bruised, finding solace in each other. Thooya and Swetha are migrants in Mumbai. Thooya, played by Naaz Shaikh, is an aspiring actress and part-time sex worker — it helps to pay the bills. Swetha, played by Sumi Baghel, is a call center employee, hoping to find a soulmate in the matrimonial market. Both are navigating an indifferent, manic city. Swetha, a new arrival, is still a little starry-eyed. She really wants to see the ‘samudra’ but Thooya tells her with the amused awareness of an old timer – itna bhi khubsoorat nahi hai. The film, presented by Anurag Kashyap, is the debut feature of Anuparna Roy and the only Indian film selected for the prestigious Orizzonti section of the 82nd Venice Film Festival (Karan Tejpal’s Stolen and Chaitanya Tamhane’s Court also premiered here). The scenario might remind you of Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine as Light, also about the bond between two migrant women in Mumbai. But Anuparna’s vision is far less lyrical. With stillness, long takes and an understated tone, she creates an anguished portrait of what it takes for women to survive. The heart of this film is a scene in which the two women are in two bathrooms next to each other — one is washing clothes in the bathing space, and the other is using the commode as a chair. What starts out as buoyant banter shifts seamlessly into grief and tears. The scene is beautifully staged and performed.