Anuparna Roy’s Lovers in the Blue Night won the NETPAC Award for Best Asian Film at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival, where the film competed in the Orizzonti section.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.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.