Anasuya Sengupta Becomes First Indian to Win Best Actress at Cannes for 'The Shameless'
Kolkata-born Actress Honored in Un Certain Regard Category for Role in Bulgarian Director Constantin Bojanov's Film
Anasuya Sengupta, an actress from Kolkata, won the first acting prize at the Cannes Film Festival on Friday for her role in The Shameless, a film directed by Bulgarian filmmaker Constantin Bojanov.
In the Un Certain Regard category, the 37-year-old won best actress.
Anasuya previously worked on Madly Bangalee (2009), directed by Anjan Dutt. She has worked as the production designer for two Netflix anthologies in 2021: Ray (Srijit Mukherji's Forget Me Not) and Saat Uchakkey (2016) by Sanjeev Sharma. She was employed by Netflix in Masaba Masaba as well.
She plays Renuka in The Shameless, a drifter who flees Delhi, where she is wanted for murder, and finds safety in a society of sex workers in northern India. The movie explores Renuka's romance with Devika, an Omara Shetty-played teenage girl.
Guan Hu's Black Dog took home the top honor in the Un Certain Regard category at other awards. Boris Lojkine's The Story of Souleymane won the jury prize. Rungano Nyoni for On Becoming A Guinea Fowl and Roberto Minervini for The Damned split the best director prize. For his performance in The Story of Souleymane, Abou Sangare won the best actor prize, while Vingt Dieux, played by Louise Courvoisier, won the youth category.
There were eighteen films in this year's Un Certain Regard selection. In addition to French-Senegalese screenwriter and director Maïmouna Doucouré, Moroccan director, screenwriter, and producer Asmae El Moudir, German-Luxembourg actress Vicky Krieps, and American film critic, director, and writer Todd McCarthy comprised the jury, which was chaired by Canadian actor, director, screenwriter, and producer Xavier Dolan.
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