A small bridge over a water body in front of the arts building is where Anasuya Sengupta would sit chatting with friends in her Jadavpur University days.

On Friday night, she crossed over from the side of Indian actors walking the red carpet at Cannes Film Festival over the years to the other side where no one has gone before — becoming the first Indian to win the Best Actress award.

The Lake Gardens girl made history for her lead role in Bulgarian director Konstantin Bojanov’s The Shameless.

“I am so incredibly overjoyed and proud to have been able to make so many people so proud! Waiting to be back with my family at the soonest. Thank you for your congratulatory messages,” Sengupta messaged Metro, as she boarded her flight home on Saturday.

Rewind by 24 hours and she was seated at Theatre Debussy where the results in the Un Certain Regard section were to be announced.

“Our film had been screened on May 17. She had sensed something brewing when the authorities checked if she was staying on but she kept it to herself,” said Tanmay Dhanania, also a part of the film’s cast.

The moment her name was announced, he captured her reaction on his phone. “It was such a demanding role, an absolute tour de force. The jury said she went through hell every day of the shoot. The film is structured around her performance,” said Dhanania of his friend, with whom he co-parents a cat called Mowgli and shares a 105-year-old house in north Goa.

The Shameless is a Hindi film, in which Sengupta plays Renuka, a vagabond seeking refuge in a sex workers’ community after fleeing a brothel after being charged with a police officer’s murder.

Sengupta’s recent work has been as production designer in projects like Sanjeev Sharma’s Saat Uchakkey, starring Manoj Bajpayee and Anupam Kher, and Srijit Mukherji’s Forget Me Not, as part of the Netflix anthology Ray.

The Bulgarian director, who was a Facebook friend, told the festival website that he “knew that she was primarily a production designer” but he “took a chance and asked her if she was interested in the role”.

“Tini, will this be art’s loss and acting’s gain? Do I call you for acting assignments or doing up my sets?” Bauddhayan Mukherji of Little Lamb Films, a Calcutta boy for whom she has handled art direction in several ad films in Mumbai, posted in jest on Facebook. “I had told her that the film’s trailer looked fabulous,” he said.

Sengupta did cut her teeth in acting as a JU undergraduate. “Tini and Tanmay acted in our plays when Tanaji (Dasgupta) and I set up Tin Can in 2006,” said Soumyak Kanti De Biswas, or Kanti, who directed a short film, The Daughter, in 2022 where Sengupta helmed the art department.

It was Anjan Dutt’s Madly Bangalee for which Sengupta first faced the camera with the Tin Can team. “They were a talented lot. Anasuya lipsynced a song for their band,” Dutt said.

Sahana Bhose, Anusuya’s classmate through La Martiniere for Girls and JU (English), remembered attending the film’s premiere at Priya.

“We were quite a flamboyant group. They were nervous about having to dress formally,” Bhose recalled.

“Going to Cannes itself is huge. This award is the icing on the cake,” said Kanti, as the friends await her return.