She has played a single mother, an estranged Mumbaikar and a Physics teacher and will soon be seen as a female buddy too. Tannishtha Chatterjee has been nicknamed “the international face of Indian cinema” online. Her film Parched has made it to the Toronto Film Festival, followed by Island City making it to the Venice Film Festival and this is the third year that her films have bagged festival mentions.
The Bengali actress is now awaiting the release of Gour Hari Dastaan where she plays the role of a journalist. She recently shot with cricketer Brett Lee for UnIndian - one of the first Australian films to feature an Indian theme. “The film breaks all the clichés of how international films perceive Indian cinema,” says Chatterjee, who’s just wrapped up shooting for Lion, featuring Nicole Kidman and Dev Patel. Talking about being typecast as a heroine who does alternate/art cinema, Chatterjee laughs, “This way, I only get talked about with reference to my films and don’t become a gossip story.” Having done female centric roles long before the trend caught on in Bollywood with films like Piku and Tanu weds Manu Returns, she feels Indian cinema is going through an exciting phase now.
“Back in 2006, When I first represented my German film at the Berlin Festival, not one Indian film had made it. Now we have films such as Masaan doing us proud at Cannes, among many others that are making it to Toronto and Venice this year,” says the actress, adding that film makers like Anurag Kashyap have been instrumental in bringing about the change in Indian cinema.