Accolades are pouring in for India at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival’s 77th edition. After Chidananda S. Naik and Mansi Maheshwari won first and third prizes in the La Cinef category, Anasuya Sengupta has now created history with her on-screen performance.
Anasuya Sengupta has become the first Indian actor to bring home the Best Actor award. She won the Un Certain Regard Prize for Best Actress for her performance in ‘The Shameless,’ directed and written by Bulgarian filmmaker Konstantin Bojanov. The film, shot over six weeks in India and Nepal, captures the journey of Renuka, a sex worker who escapes life in a brothel by stabbing a policeman. The film underscores the character’s tumultuous path and her engagement with themes of love and survival. Alongside Sengupta, the film stars Omara Shetty as Devika, Renuka’s love interest.
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Brimming with emotion, Sengupta accepted the honor and dedicated her win to “the queer community and other marginalized communities for their courageous resilience in unjust battles,” as reported by Variety. The budding actor also added, “You don’t have to be queer to fight for equality, you don’t have to be colonized to understand that colonizing is pathetic — we just need to be very, very decent human beings.”
Anasuya Sengupta hails from Kolkata and has primarily worked as a production designer in Mumbai, currently residing in Goa. Her portfolio as a production designer includes contributions to Srijit Mukherjee’s ‘Forget Me Not,’ Netflix’s 2021 Satyajit Ray anthology, and the Netflix show ‘Masaba Masaba.’ Sengupta pursued her education at Kolkata’s Jadavpur University and made her acting debut in Bengali director Anjan Dutt’s ‘Madly Bangalee’ (2009).
Other wins in the category include ‘Black Dog,’ directed by Guan Hu, which bagged the Prix Un Certain Regard, while Boris Lojkine won the Jury Prize for ‘The Story of Souleymane.’ Best Director (ex aequo) went to Roberto Minervini for ‘The Damned’ and Rungano Nyoni for ‘On Becoming a Guinea Fowl.’ Abou Sangaré won the Best Actor award for ‘L’Histoire de Souleymane,’ and Louise Courvoisier received the Youth Prize for ‘Holy Cow!’ with Tawfik Alzaidi receiving a special mention for ‘Norah.’