Anasuya first Indian to win Best Actress at Cannes

KOLKATA: Kolkata-born Anasuya Sengupta has made history by winning the Best Actress award at the Cannes Film Festival. The honour has come in the Un Certain Regard section for Sengupta's role in Bulgarian director Konstantin Bojanov's 'The Shameless'.

The honour for Anasuya Sengupta has come in Un Certain Regard section for her role in Bulgarian director Konstantin Bojanov's 'The Shameless', in which she plays a sex worker who flees a Delhi brothel after murdering a cop.

Un Certain Regard section runs parallel to the main competition, and seeks to bring to the fore new trends, paths and countries making cinema. Now settled in Goa, Sengupta is a successful art director and has worked in feature films like Sanjeev Sharma's 'Saat Uchakkey' and Bengal director Srijit Mukherji's 'Forget Me Not'. The latter was a part of a Netflix anthology Ray. Bengal, Sengupta's home, however, hasn't seen much of the Jadavpur University alumna on screen except in a supporting role in Anjan Dutt's 2009 Bengali film Madly Bangalee.

Anirban Datta, head of direction and screenplay writing department at Kolkata's Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute, has known Sengupta since his days at Pune's FTII.

"Anasuya is like a whip. I haven't ever seen someone so sharp. She was not an alumnus of FTII. Yet the student diploma film, where she did art direction, went on to win the Swarna Kamal," Datta said. He added that he wanted Sengupta as an art director for a film in Kolkata, but could not garner funds for the project in the city. "My films have gone to 200 film festivals and yet, I haven't got the finances for a film in Kolkata where I had planned to cast Tanmay Dhanania - Anasuya's co-actor in The Shameless," Datta said.


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