Goethe-Institut Bangladesh
Tillotama Shome

© Tejinder Singh Khamka Actress Tillotama Shome has created a repertoire of exceptional performances in critically acclaimed award winning films both international and national. She is an extraordinary actress who navigates between cultures and languages effortlessly. Her debut as Alice in Mira Nair’s ‘Monsoon Wedding’  won hearts world over and was applauded by The New York Magazine as something that has “ a moonstruck quality right out of A Midsummer Nights Dream”.

A maverick at heart, she quit films, to do a second masters from New York University in Educational Theatre and the received the prestigious INLAKS scholarship for it. She went on to work as a teaching artist in New York, exploring issues of violence and sexuality, in prison and in domestic violence shelters.

She returned to films four years later and since then has done more than 35 films in various languages. Tillotama’s performance as a girl who is raised as a boy in Qissa by Anup Singh won her awards and accolades. The Variety described her work as a “fearless performance combines gender assumptions so seamlessly that the border between male and female seems to fade into irrelevance.” Her performance in Konkona SenSharma's A Death in the Gunj and in Hindi Medium garnered her much praise from both the independent and mainstream flag bearers of Indian cinema.
          
Her recent debut at Cannes, with the film Sir directed by Rohena Gera won the Gan foundation prize at the Cannes Semaine de la Critique 2018. Her portrayal of Ratna won her Best Actress awards nationally (Filmfare most recently) and internationally and the hearts of audience members after an extensive theatrical release internationally.

She was also on the jury of the Macau International Film Festival along with co jurors Paul Schrader, Danis Tanovic, Mabel Cheung and helmed by Mabel Cheung.
Her upcoming projects include Madhuja Mukherjee's feature film, Deep Six, Saumyanada Sahi's feature Baksho Bondi and Rima Das's untitled feature.