Tannishtha Chatterjee

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Tannishtha Chatterjee was born in Pune in a Bengali Hindu family to a business executive father and a mother who is a Political Science professor. Her family along with Tannishtha has lived out of India for a few years until they decided to settle in Delhi. 

Tannishtha did her schooling at Bluebells School International and later majored in Chemistry from Delhi University after which she entered the National School of Drama. 

Tannishtha an Indian actress and director is best remembered in the West for her performance in the British film, Brick Lane in the year 2007. The film was an adaptation of Monica Ali’s Bestselling novel with the same name. She was nominated for best actress in the British Independent Film Awards.  Her other notable roles have been for the film, Shadows of Time, Road by Academy-Award winning German director Florian Gallenberg.    In the film Road Movie she has starred opposite Abhay Deol  for which she earned the title of Princess of Parallel cinema and for the film Dekh Indian Circus, she won the National Film Award.

Shadows of Time earned her critical acclaim and took Tannishtha to the International Film Festival and Toronto International Film Festival and the Berlin International Film Festival.  
She also worked for an Indo-French coproduced film Hava Aney Dey directed by Partho Sen-Gupta which was shown in the premier at the Berlin International Film Festival.  She won the best film award at the Durban International Film festival among many others. 

Following these awards, Tannishtha worked in the film Strings and Kasturi and a Bengali Film Bibar which was critically acclaimed and voted her for the best actress.

However Brick Lane directed by Sarah Gavron gave Tannishtha the international exposure and recognition.  She was also nomintated along with the actresses Judi Dench and Anne Hathaway for the British Independent Awards. 
She played a major role in the film Bhopal: Prayer for Rain starring opposite Martin Sheen. 
Tannishtha was referred as the Flag bearer at the 62nd Cannes Film Festival wherein she won the best actress award at the Miaac New York Film Festival for her role in the film Bombay Summer.  She was addressed as one of the most International of Indian actors.  She was in the lead in Lucy Liu’s film Meena which is based on the book Half the Sky. 

Tannishtha was a member of the jury at the 2010 Asia Pacific Screen Awards and later appeared in the T. Series film I love New Year starring opposite Sunny Deol , the film was directed by Radhika Rao and Vinay Sapru. 

She acted in Canadian film Siddharth which was officially selected for the 70th Venice Film Festival and for the 2013 Toronto Internationa Film Festival. She is the only Indian actress who has been selected in three of the major International Film festivals in the same year.  
Her other noteworthy projects are Parched directed by Leena Yadav which was showcased at the Toronto Australian Romantic comedy Unindian with Brett Lee. Island City which won her the best Ruchika Oberoi the best debut director in Venice and Garth Davies’s film Lion co-starring Dev Patel and Nicole Kidman.  Her film Angry Indian Goddesses was well received at the Toronto and Rome International Film Festival. 

Tannishtha Chatterjee was given a special award held at the BAFTA for her contribution towards the Asian Cinema.  She has won the best actress award for the film Parched at the Festival 2 Valenciennes and the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles in 2016.    She won the best actress at the Pune International Film Festival for her role as Dr. Rahmabai .   

In 2019 Tannishtha Chatterjee made her debut as the director for the film Rome Mein which won the World premier at the Busan International Film Festival where she was awarded the Asia Star Award.