Anasuya Sengupta has created history as she became the first Indian to win a top acting award at the Cannes Film Festival. Anasuya took home the Best Actress award at the Un Certain Regard segment of Cannes for her role in Bulgarian director Konstantin Bojanov’s film, The Shameless. The movie also features Indian actress Mita Vashist.
Who is Anasuya Sengupta?
The actress has worked mainly as a production designer in Mumbai and lives in Goa. According to media reports, Anasuya contributed to the set design of Masaba Gupta’s Netflix show Masaba Masaba. She also worked as a production designer of Srijit Mukherjee’s Forget Me Not in Netflix’s Satyajit Ray anthology which released in 2021.
The actress is originally from Kolkata and she pursued her education at Jadavpur University. The director of The Shameless one day surprised her by asking her to send her audition tape after going through her Facebook posts. That was the beginning of her acting career.
Upon receiving the prestigious award, Anasuya said she wants to dedicate it to “the queer community and other marginalised communities for so bravely fighting a fight they really shouldn’t have to”. The actress ended her short acceptance speech by saying, “We don’t need to be colonised to know how very, very pathetic colonisers are.”
About The Shameless
The film revolves around the story of a sex worker who escapes from a brothel in Delhi after stabbing a policeman. Anasuya plays Renuka in the film. The Shameless also revolves around Renuka’s love affair with Devika, played by Omara Shetty, who’s initially sheltered from entering sex work because of her ailments.
The film was reportedly shot over a month and half in India and Nepal.
(The article is published under a mutual content partnership arrangement between The Free Press Journal and Connected to India)