film debut with the 2005 drama Amu; she had also written the production's screenplay. The film released in India in January to critical acclaim and positive response from the audience. Amu was screened at international film festivals in Berlin and Toronto. Bose won several national and international awards for the film, including the FIPRESCI Critics Award, the National Film Award for Best Feature Film in English and the Gollapudi Srinivas Award for Best Debut Director. Bose wrote the novel Amu, which based on the screenplay which released simultaneously with the film. Continued critical success (2010- present) Bose co-wrote the Bedabrata Pain directed film Chittagong, a period drama that chronicles the 1930 Chittagong armoury raid. Her 2014 production, Margarita, with a Straw, starring Kalki Koechlin as a girl with cerebral palsy, premiered at 2014 Toronto International Film Festival to critical acclaim. The film won the NETPAC Award for Best Asian Film at the event. She had begun working on the script a year after the death of her son; the film's initial draft won the Sundance Mahindra Global Filmmaker Award, at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. Bose was inspired to make the film by her real life experiences of studying in New York, her relationship with her cousin Malini Chib who has cerebral palsy, and her and Chib's sexuality as queer and disabled people respectively. The film was originally rejected by the censor board in India, but won an appeal and was released shortly after the ban on homosexuality in India was lifted. In 2019, Bose has written and directed The Sky Is Pink, a film based on the motivational speaker Aisha Chaudhary, starring Priyanka Chopra, Farhan Akhtar and Zaira Wasim. The film was theatrically released on 11 October 2019 and was critically acclaimed. She directed the short Raat Rani, featuring Fatima Sana Shaikh, for the 2022 anthology Modern Love: Mumbai. Upcoming project Bose has committed to write the pilot episode for an untitled television series based on Diksha Basu's novel The Windfall. Personal life She was married to Bedabrata Pain but is now separated. The couple's son Ishan Bose-Pain died on 13 September 2010 at age 16. Bose identifies as bisexual. Filmography Awards See also List of female film and television directors List of LGBT-related films directed by women References External links Official Webpage and Bio of Shonali Bose Images Film Festival for Women, Zimbabwe 1974 births Living people 20th-century