Anasuya Sengupta who played a lead role in Bulgarian director Konstantin Bojanov's Hindi movie 'The Shameless' became the first Indian to win the Best Actress award at the Un Certain Regard segment of the Cannes Filme Festival 2024.
'The Shameless', which portrays the journey of two sex workers, premiered at Cannes on May 17. Sengupta plays sex worker Renuka, who flees from a Delhi brothel after murdering a policeman. She seeks refuge in a community of sex workers, where she meets Devika, a young girl forced to become a sex worker.
While accepting the award at the film gala, Sengupta dedicated her win to the queer community and other marginalised sections who are fighting for their rights.
"You don't have to be queer to fight for equality, you don't have to be colonised to know that colonising is pathetic we just need to be very, very decent human beings," she said in her acceptance speech.
Who is Anasuya Sengupta?
Anasuya Sengupta, who is from Kolkata, did her education at Jadavpur University. After moving to Mumbai in 2013, she worked as production designer several projects. These include Sanjeev Sharma's Saat Uchakkey in 2016 and Srijit Mukherjee's 'Forget Me Not', which was part of an anthology based on Sathyajit Ray's stories, in 2021. In 2009, she did a supporting role for Anjan Dutta's 'Madly Bangalee'.
