West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Sunday congratulated Anasuya Sengupta for winning the 'Best Actress Award' in the Un Certain Regard category of the 2024 Cannes Film Festival and said it was a great moment for Indian women.
She also congratulated Payal Kapadia, Santosh Sivan and Chidananda S Naik for winning awards at the same event.
"Congratulations to Anasuya Sengupta for winning the Best Actress Award at Cannes Film Festival. A girl of Bengal and a student of Jadavpur University, she makes us proud by this fabulous achievement of being the first Indian to win this laurel," Banerjee posted on X.
"Congratulations to Payal Kapadia too for winning the prestigious Grand Prix at Cannes! Great moments for Indian women!! My congratulations also to Santosh Sivan and Chidananda S. Naik for winning awards at the festival," she added.
City-born Anasuya received the award for her portrayal of Renuka in the film 'The Shameless', written and directed by Bulgarian filmmaker Constantin Bojanov.
Filmmaker Payal Kapadia won the Grand Prix award at the same event for her drama 'All We Imagine as Light'.
Film and Television Institute of India's student Chidananda S Naik bagged the first prize in the La Cinef section for 'Sunflowers were the first ones to know', a 15-minute short film based on a Kannada folklore.
Much renowned cinematographer Santosh Sivan became the first Asian to be awarded the prestigious Pierre Angénieux Tribute award at the festival in recognition of his "career and exceptional quality of work".
'The Shameless', which had its premiere at Cannes on May 17, forays into a dark, disturbing world of exploitation and misery in which two sex workers, one who bears the scars of her line of work, the other a young girl days away from ritual initiation, forge a bond and seek to throw off their shackles.
