Anasuya Sengupta is bathing in the glory of marking history with her recent achievement. The star has won the Best Actress award at the Un Certain Regard of the Cannes Film Festival, becoming the first Indian to win the title. She won the award for her role in the movie Shameless, helmed by Bulgarian filmmaker Constantin Bojanov. The film tells the story of a sex worker who escapes a brothel in Delhi after stabbing a police.

Hails from Kolkata, Sengupta never had a plan for acting career in the beginning. After graduating in English literature from Jadavpur University, she thought about exploring journalism. However, taking unexpected turns, she ended up in doing a support role in Anjan Dutta, a Bengali director”s rock musical Madly Bangalee. She has also delved into theatres, before moving to Mumbai, where her brother Abhishek Sengupta was working in films.

After failing to find acting gig for herself in the city, she moved to the department of arts. She did wonders in the field. In an interview given to My Kolkata, she said, as a production designer in Mumbai, the works she holds close include Sanjeev Sharma’s Saat Uchakkey (2016) and Srijit Mukherji’s Forget Me Not, part of Netflix”s anthology Ray (2021). Another of her work that received wide attention was in Netflix show Masaba Masaba.

Despite being successful in Mumbai, Sengupta felt lost in the city. In the interview, she said a part of her was lost and she felt “devoid of free expression”. This feeling of lost prompted her to relocate to Goa.

While in Goa, the star met with the love of her life, Yashdeep. She met him online. He loved her art and wanted a calendar. Taking to her Instagram, she said, “We met online. He loved my art and wanted a calendar. We spent a week exploring Goa together, him on his Enfield, me on my scooter”.

What paved way for her to mark history by being the first Indian to win the Best Actress award at the Un Certain Regard of the Cannes Film Festival was an invitation from Bojanov, who was Sengupta”s Facebook friend, for an audition. The filmmaker said “It was a yes at first shot”.

After winning that award, the star dedicated it to “the queer community and other marginalised communities around the world for bravely fighting a battle they shouldn”t have to fight.” In her acceptance speech she said, “You don’t have to be queer to fight for equality, you don’t have to be colonised to understand that colonising is pathetic — we just need to be very, very decent human beings”, as quoted by Variety.