Around 15 years ago, when Anasuya Sengupta moved from Kolkata to Mumbai to become an actress, she had never imagined it would take her so long to make her mark in cinema. “I used to tell myself that if it has to happen, it will happen one day. I didn’t know it would take 15 years,” she tells us. Anasuya plays the protagonist Renuka in The Shameless, for which she won the Best Actress award at Cannes in the Un Certain Regard section – a first for an Indian actor

About working in the film, she says, “When you see everyone bring in their A-game, you give it your best. You can’t give the best actress award to a crew, but just one person can’t do it alone.” The actress, who is currently in Delhi where her husband, Lt Cdr Yashdeep Sharma is posted, speaks to us about her journey from Kolkata to Cannes.

For Anasuya, acting took a back seat when she became an assistant director. Thereafter, she worked in the art department, eventually becoming a production designer and then HOD of the production design department at 26. As a production designer, Anasuya has worked on projects such as Ray and Chippa, and she believes that it was her love for storytelling that led her down this path.

She said, “So, cinema, writing, storytelling, and repeatedly working with some wonderful people have been constants in my life. I think the environment I created for myself has always been very artistic. I worked on developing a strong instinct, so when Konstantin (Bojanov, The Shameless director) offered me the film, I knew I had to take it.”

In conversation with us, Bojanov said that it was not an immediate decision for Anasuya to accept the role; she took a while before making a decision. What was she hesitant about? “I wanted to act, and I used to tell myself that if it has to happen, it will happen one day. I didn’t know it would happen 15 years later, and I wasn’t actively thinking about it. When Konstantin approached me, it caught me off guard. I may be a first-time actor in a way, but I’ve been in the industry for so long. I kept wondering, ‘Are you sure? I don’t have a whole body of work. Will you be able to mount this with me? Will the producers agree? I was almost worried about the film,’ and he kept saying, ‘Just read the script’.”

Anasuya says that The Shameless’s story touched her so much that she wanted to give it her very best. She said, “If people are connecting with her (the character), I felt the exact same thing when I read the script. I mean, she’s almost like a feminist icon in her own unsung way. Those are not the heroes we sing about, and why don’t we? It bore right into my heart. I wanted to stand up for her more than anything else, and that’s what steered me to just do a deep dive.”

“There is no Renuka without Devika,” says Anasuya as she talks about her co-star Omara Shetty, who played Devika in the film.

“Renuka’s character was a bit of a lone wolf, a nightcrawler type. A lot of my mental work for the character involved spending a lot of time by myself, walking the streets alone, and listening to music. Much of my preparation was focused on that. Except for this light in Renuka’s life, which is Devika, portrayed by Omara. We kept having discussions about how in this dark world, the love between these two unlikely odd characters is the light. It’s that love, this is the light for both characters,” she adds.

Bulgarian filmmaker Konstantin Bojanov, director of The Shameless starring Cannes winner Anasuya Sengupta, (in an interview to TOI) credited William Dalrymple’s Nine Lives: In Search Of The Sacred In Modern India, for seeding the idea of making a documentary set in modern India. Speaking to us, Dalrymple shared his joy at having inspired the talked-about film.

“I haven’t seen The Shameless. But I’m thrilled Nine Lives inspired this wonderful movie,” said the historian, broadcaster, curator and critic.

Bojanov has spoken about how in spite of working on the documentary he eventually moved on to make the feature. Dalrymple said, “Reading the book gave Konstantin the idea of this subject. I am delighted that Nine Lives has been the inspiration for this project.”

Dalrymple also praised the lead actor who won the Best Performance award at Cannes. “I am thrilled about Anasuya receiving such incredible acclaim for what is her first (full-fledged) film role. From the clips that I have seen, she is astonishing, even though she is not actually an actor,” he said, adding, “So all credit to her, all credit to Konstantin. I think my role in it is very small, but it definitely provided the start. I would urge everybody to go watch the film and read the book.”

“I was in Brooklyn and I picked up William Dalrymple’s Nine Lives in a local bookstore. I became fascinated by the themes it tackled – from art, tradition, modernity to sexuality and friendship in the complex and dynamic India of today. Without Nine Lives, the movie would never have existed,” Konstantin Bojanov said in an interview with TOI.

Anasuya Sengupta scripted history at the 77th Cannes Film Festival, as she became the first Indian actor to win the Best Actress Award in the Un Certain Regard segment for her role in the film The Shameless, directed by Bulgarian filmmaker Konstantin Bojanov.

“I couldn’t believe it was happening! But as I shakily walked to the stage and stood with the artistes I have admired, my heroes, it felt oddly natural to be welcomed with so much authenticity and love. I am so grateful to the jury for seeing my hard work,” Sengupta tells us, as she boards her flight back home to India.

The actor has been flooded with congratulatory messages from across the world, including those from Indian actors such as Ranveer Singh, Alia Bhatt and Arjun Kapoor. “I am amazed at the love pouring in from so many back home. It makes me proud to make everyone proud. I am so excited about celebrating with my family,” she gushes.

The Shameless follows a sex worker, who flees a Delhi brothel after stabbing a policeman. Sengupta dedicated her award “to the queer community”.

The actor admits that her journey in showbiz hasn’t been easy. Her career began with a supporting role in the 2009 film Madly Bangalee, followed by production designing for a decade. She was also a part of Masaba Masaba in 2020, and The Shameless happened the same year. “I auditioned for it. The director, Konstantin, had reached out. It was a lead role,” she reveals, adding, “I have worked so hard for so long, and I’m here to keep doing it more and more. It all feels worth it when I look back.”

I am so happy to share this moment with Payal Kapadia, Kani (Kusruti), Chhaya (Kadam) and Divya (Prabha), the team of All We Imagine As Light, who have won the Grand Prix. I adore them.

Anasuya Sengupta made history on Saturday as the first Indian to win the Best Performance award in the Festival de Cannes un Regard category. She received it for Bulgarian director Konstantin Bojanov’s The Shameless.

Upon receiving the award, a visibly emotional Anasuya said, “This is for the queer community everywhere, and all other marginalized communities all over the world... You don’t have to be queer to fight for equality, you don’t have to be colonized to know that colonizing is pathetic — we just need to be very, very decent human beings. More female gaze is the way forward.”

The Shameless was initially being made as a documentary exploring the themes of “love, sexuality, free will and artistic expression, within the confines of the castes and religious beliefs of present-day India,” the director said in an interview for the Cannes official platform, adding how eventually it evolved into a feature inspired by the true story of a girl born in the devadasi system.

About casting Anasuya in the pivotal role of Renuka, Bojanov said, “I looked at her pictures on Facebook and said, ‘She fits my vision of Renuka perfectly.’ It was more than just her appearance; it was her attitude too. I knew that she was primarily a production designer. Nonetheless, I took a chance...”

---------------------------------------

Born and brought up in the Lake Gardens locality of south Kolkata, Anasuya is an alumnus of La Martiniere for Girls, Kolkata, and completed her graduation from the Department of English, Jadavpur University. She debuted with Anjan Dutt’s 2009 rock musical film Madly Bangalee and has worked as a production designer in Sanjeev Sharma’s Saat Uchakkey (2016) and Srijit Mukherji’s Forget Me Not in the anthology Ray (2021). She is now based in Goa, where she works as an illustrator and production designer.

The Festival de Cannes un Regard category celebrates cinema of discoveries, and its mission is to bring out new trends, new paths and new countries of cinema. This year, 18 feature films were screened in this category. Guan Hu’s Black Dog took home the Un Certain du Regard prize while Abou Sangare won the best actor award for the film L’Histoire de Souleymane.

My connection to India goes way back to over 20 years. But to be precise, after my first feature film ‘Avé’ premiered in Cannes in 2011, I was looking to develop a new script. I was in Brooklyn and by chance picked up William Dalrymple’s book ‘Nine Lives’ in a local bookstore. I became fascinated by the themes it tackled— from art, tradition, modernity to sexuality and friendship in the complex and dynamic India of today. I optioned the book in 2012 with the idea of creating a documentary but gave up the project to develop ‘The Shameless’. Though it is a completely fictional story, I have to acknowledge that without ‘Nine Lives’, this movie would never have existed. And for that reason, I’m grateful to William Dalrymple. But the story in the book and the film are completely different.

While shooting the documentary in the Belgaum region of Karnataka, I observed the interactions of the central character, a 33-year-old real-life Devadasi called Reshma, with her best friend, Renuka, a sex worker in her thirties. It was incredibly touching and tender. The kind of emotional support that these two women were able to give each other in a very harsh world is what made me think of the story of ‘The Shameless’. Several women who come to these communities work under the relative protection of a quasi-religious system. So, I imagined what if a woman on the run, who has committed a crime, enters this community that operates by its own sort of rules, and rebels against it? That’s how the central character of Renuka (played by Sengupta) was born.

I take a long time to cast the leads for my films. I worked with Parag Mehta, the casting director who was recommended to me by Anurag Kashyap. Although I had shortlisted some extremely talented and well-known actresses for the part, I wasn’t convinced. I was so discouraged that I was contemplating making it as an animated film for adults. Then an Indian producer and a director I know said we have a friend who makes these very interesting drawings and maybe we could work together to develop the animated characters. And this is how I befriended Anusaya on Facebook. I would keep looking at her photo and knew there was something about her; a certain charisma that was suited to Renuka. The idea of the animated film was struck down by the sales agent and the producer, but that initial connection with Anasuya remained. The making of this film took so long — almost 12 years — that it almost drove me to insanity but the character of Renuka was the biggest hook for me, and it kept me going.

I don’t speak Hindi and wrote the script in English. Translating the dialogue into Hindi proved to be a major challenge. I tried to work with several different translators and writers, and they were taking it in a different direction or adding Bollywood clichés. Ultimately, it was my production designer, Parul Sondh, who stepped in to translate and knew exactly what I wanted. We shot it on a very, very low budget in Nepal. The financing took years, with small chunks of money from different countries like Switzerland, France, Bulgaria and Taiwan. And finally, an Indian production company came on board just six weeks ago!

Growing up in 1970s Bulgaria, because of the links between India and eastern bloc countries, we watched a lot of Bollywood films. I remember as a kid, just bawling as I fondly watched ‘Haathi Mere Saathi’ maybe 10 times. Back then, as a kid, it was either Russian war films or East German Westerns, which is funnily enough a contradiction in terms, or Bollywood. But I don’t watch mainstream Bollywood movies now. However, there’s been a wave of refreshing, new voices in Indian independent cinema in the last 15-20 years. Some that have stayed with me include ‘Killa’, ‘Liar’s Dice’, ‘Newton’, Anurag’s ‘Black Friday’, and ‘Court’.

I could only make the film from my own perspective. It would have been foolish and ignorant of me to try to make an Indian film from the perspective of an Indian director. I tend to focus on the universal aspects of the story, no matter where the story takes place. Ultimately, stories are what connect us. Also, it worked because of my sincere connection to the subject matter and all my Indian collaborators. You don’t make a film alone.