Come September and Tannishtha Chatterjee will be at the Toronto International Film Festival for the sixth time. Last year, she had two world premieres there, Parched and Angry Indian Goddesses, and the year before, her Indo-Canadian film, Siddharth, was unveiled there. Before that she went with the German film, Shadows of Time (2005), the British drama Brick Lane (2007) and Dev Benegal's Road Movie (2009). This time she'll walk the red carpet for the Hollywood biggie Lion, also featuring Nicole Kidman, Dev Patel, Rooney Mara, Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Deepti Naval. After its world premiere in Toronto, the Saroo Brierley biopic, based on his memoir, A Long Way Home, will be released in the US by The Weinstein Company on November 25. “I couldn't be there for the premiere of the British historical drama, Anna Karenina, in 2012, I won't miss going this time,“ she asserts.

In 2005, a naive Tannishtha, then in her early twenties, had gone to her first fest with her mother's sari and some jeans and Tees. Now, a festival regular, she's in talks with her designer friends for a contemporary Indo-Western fusion, teamed with Indian jewellery and fabric.

When she'd gone to Canada with Brick Lane, Tannishtha had partied with Hollywood A-listers like Sean Penn, Jude Law and Daniel Day Lewis. This time she's looking forward to meeting Nicole there. The Australian actress plays Saroo's adoptive Australian mother. “She was supposed to shoot with us in Kolkata where we shot in real locations. Dev was there, but for some reason Nicole couldn't come down so this will be our first interaction,“ she reveals.

Directed by another Australian Garth Davis, the film traces the journey of Saroo who at the age of five he is separated from his biological mother when, while playing hide-and-seek with his brother, he hops on to a train and is transported to Kolkata. Alone and lost on the streets, he's taken in by an NGO and subsequently adopted by an Australian couple who take him out of India. Two decades later, he traces his family using Google Earth. The young Saroo is played by Sunny Pawar who grows up to be Dev Patel. All the other actors, including Nicole, play characters who come into his life at different points.

Tannishtha who was shooting another film in Australia got a touching email from Garth appreciating her work and telling her that when he decided to make a film set in India, he created a part she'd never played before and was hopeful she'd accept it. “Every character is based on the book, so is mine, but Garth has given it a special twist. It would reveal a secret so I can't talk too much about it. During the shoot in Kolkata, when we were in character no one recognised us, but when we stepped out of our trailer, we got a lot of attention,“ smiles the actress who has been promoting her upcoming film, UnIndian, with Aussie fast blowler Brett Lee all of last week. “Even though it's his first full-fledged role, he's done ads and a music video and is a natural born actor rather than a sports star, charming and funny“.