Calcutta-born Anasuya Sengupta has become the first Indian actor to win an acting award at the Cannes Film Festival. She won the Best Actress Award in the Un Certain Regard segment for her performance in The Shameless at the 77th Cannes Film Festival. The film, directed and written by Bulgarian filmmaker Konstantin Bojanov, revolves around Renuka, played by Anasuya, who escapes from a Delhi brothel after killing a police officer. The film also stars Omara Shetty, as the love interest of Renuka.

The Lake Gardens girl dedicated her award “to the queer community and other marginalised communities all around the world for so bravely fighting a fight they really shouldn’t have to fight”. She said: “You don’t have to be queer to fight for equality, you don’t have be colonised to know that colonising is pathetic — we just need to be very, very decent human beings.” Anasuya, who studied at La Martiniere for Girls and Jadavpur University, now lives in Goa.

One of her earliest acting gigs was in Anjan Dutt’s Madly Bangalee, where she played Tania. “She typifies teenage confusion like the rest but manages to resolve all the conflicts within her by the end of the film. By fluke, she replaces the lead vocalist of the band, Pablo, who also happens to be her boyfriend. Her parents want her to go abroad for studies, while she wants to do music with her friends,” she had told t2 in 2009 about her role in the Bengali film. Madly Bangalee was about a bunch of boys and girls making rock music in the city.

Anasuya moved to Mumbai in 2013 and started working as a production designer, identifying the design style and visual concept of films such as Srijit Mukherji’s Forget Me Not, which was a part of Netflix’s Ray anthology.

The Shameless follows two sex workers who must reconcile their love for one another with their personal faiths and circumstances. Devika (Omara Shetty) is a fragile Indian teenager who aspires to be a rapper. She lives in a community of devadaasis, and is keenly aware that in time-honoured tradition, she will have to submit to a parade of eligible men who can use her body as a sexual vessel. Suddenly, up pops Renuka (Anasuya), an older, more irascible sex worker who shows an interest in the singer.

t2 spoke to two directors and an actor who have been part of Anasuya’s screen and stage journey...

Srijit Mukherji

I am extremely elated... I met Tini (Anasuya) for the first time when I was doing a workshop with the actors for Madly Bangalee (directed by Anjan Dutt). Tini was the female lead in Madly Bangalee. She was extremely bright, hungry... very opinionated but flexible... she was a fantastic person to work with. Later I worked with her when I was making Forget Me Not for Ray. She was my production designer and she did a fantastic job. She is a person of varied interests who is interested in various departments of cinema. I am so glad she has won possibly one of the greatest prizes for an actor in world cinema. I am extremely proud of her. Also, she is my neighbour in Lake Gardens and stays three blocks away!

Soumyajit Majumdar

I am very happy. It feels like life has come full circle. I first saw Anasuya perform in the cult play Video at G.D. Birla Sabhagar in January 2008 as a high-school theatre enthusiast. Video was a production of the youth theatre group Tin Can. Her performance was inspiring, to say the least, and so were the performances of her friends Tanaji (Dasgupta), Tanmay (Dhanania), Sumeet (Thakur), Wrik (Anubrata Basu) and many others... Video was directed by Kanti. Tini had played a strong and feisty character... the character and the play were way ahead of its times. She played it very naturally.

Later, I was lucky enough to become a part of the same play as an actor and travel to Mumbai with this close-knit bunch of extremely talented artistes.... I found her to be very warm and spirited. She was industrious and would always motivate the juniors in the group. Her leadership qualities and artistic fervour were very inspiring. I recollected all this when I saw The Shameless trailer. I met Tini again in 2015 in Mumbai, and found that she had matured as an artiste. She was a production designer then. A few years later, she told me that she had liked my performance in the film Cat Sticks.

Anjan Dutt

I am really happy for her and feel so proud. Kanti and Tanaji had approached Neel Dutt to do the music for their short film. I found them to be really interesting. At that time I was planning to start Madly Bangalee. Then I got to know that they had a theatre group (Tin Can). They knew what to do and we did the whole thing. It was evident then that Tini was very talented. She was very convincing as Tania. They were all very excited to do the film and Madly Bangalee emerged as a critically acclaimed film. The group was interested in theatre, cinema, music and that was reflected in the way they approached the shoot. They had the ability to do a lot of things. They always hung out together and worked as a group... I really liked that. They made me feel young. It is a proud moment for Tin Can and me.