Karim and Ameena, a married couple from a flood-stricken region of Bengal, eke out a living in Mumbai, working as a rat catcher and in a phone-room attendant at a bar, respectively. After a chance encounter with Sukka, Karim helps him and becomes a thief, while Ameena shares her loneliness with Omran, a Gujarati man she meets at work. The stories of these four characters - a refugee, a woman, a gay man, and a Muslim - navigating their lives in Mumbai as members of the lower classes are poignantly intertwined. Here, ‘Blue Night’ is both the name of the bar and, literally, a night steeped in melancholy. Yet it is also a starting point for another kind of possibility and hope. Anuparna Roy, who won Best Director in the Orizzonti section at the 2025 Venice Film Festival with her dazzling debut feature Songs of Forgotten Trees - the first Indian film to receive the award - returns just one year later to Venice’s Orizzonti with her second feature Lovers in the Blue Night. (CHOI Eun)