Venice 2026: Lovers in the Blue Night (dir. Anuparna Roy) | Review

Double joy, double light — Anuparna Roy returns to Orizzonti not once, but twice in succession, with last year’s Best Director win for Songs of Forgotten Trees still glowing behind her. As the gentle art of slow cinema never fades, Roy brings it back again in Lovers in the Blue Night — four people, each with their own struggle, all wanting the same thing life offers.

Mumbai is pretty much the heart of India — busy streets, lively neighbourhoods, never a quiet moment. The stakes keep rising, the streets keep filling, and the chase keeps getting bigger. During this period, Karim (Pritam Pilania) and Ameena (Neelima Sharma) cohabit with no evident emotional connection. Karim remains absorbed in his own concerns, responding to Ameena only when circumstances require, while Ameena reciprocates in kind — communicating solely to maintain the legal framework of their marriage. Her professional life follows an unconventional path, where she works as a bar executive, interacting with clients on demand, using atypical, sexualised language as her primary tool. Karim meets Sukka (Bhushan Shimpi) in the middle of a raid — saving a thief, and something long dormant stirs between them. Meanwhile, Omran, a pimp in the bar, becomes a person of interest for Ameena through a mistaken impression that somehow sparks a feeling inside him. A love square emerges, tangled and restless, moving back and forth — repulsion and attraction threading through every corner of their lives.

The film lives in three shadows, namely desire, lust, and affection, where they delude, they pull, they make us hold on to what we shouldn’t. It lets out a feeling as if there is a silent war to stay whole in a world that keeps moving, while hiding from oneself. The screenplay is designed like a meeting of Vikram Aditya Sengupta and Payal Kapadia — two voices that know how fragile a human bond can be. The film represents Mumbai’s evolving urban landscape within its aspirations and its fractures, exposing the social divisions beneath.

We observe figures marked by anxiety, desire, and remorse, seeking affection and connection with a certain dependence. These modest needs pursue fulfilment, though the rewards they secure remain inherently constrained. There’s a poetic quality to how the film looks back at desire, turning longing into image, into metaphor. A different way of talking about love, maybe. But it also shows something darker — some people build lives from what’s alive, and others build lives on the backs of others. The understated, reserved score by Nishant Ramtake, employed at selected moments, effectively guides viewers toward an appreciation of the distinct qualities embedded within each segment of the film.

Lovers in the Blue Night poetically magnifies an alternative world of love, offering a slow-burning treasure that flows with hidden realities. It circles around need, betrayal, guilt, love, and regret, all of it bundled into something that feels both fragile and immense, where each story represents a forbidden world. For each of these individuals, their secrets and desires are bound together. The nature of their connections remains uncertain — formation is invisible, attraction unexplainable. Nonetheless, the film presents the taboo beauty of love in all its disorderly complexity.

The film may be telling us what it truly means to live closeted in every structure — facing a world that demands acceptance, but only after a trail of errors. Yet, a line haunts — “You’re the only one alive among corpses,” where reality is a masked teacher, revealing truth only when the student is ready.

The 83rd edition of the Venice International Film Festival is running on September 2-12, 2026.