Sharmila Tagore's life story is a painting of India in miniature. Her family – the Bengali Tagores, to whom she was born in Hyderabad – traces itself back to the Nobel literature laureate Rabindranath Tagore, the Bengali Renaissance and beyond. Her movie debut in the second of Satyajit Ray's great Apu trilogy, aged just 14, immediately secured her a place in film history. The following year, again for Ray, she trounced the idea that Indian cinema should be associated with overacting by giving one of the stillest, most nuanced performances in world cinema for Devi (1960). At the age of 15, she was at the creative centre of Bengali – and therefore Indian – film. However, this centre wasn’t quite enough for the fiercely independent Tagore – she wanted more freedom, more fun, more of the spirit of the 60s, perhaps – so in 1964 she made her Hindi (Bollywood) debut and, in a string of films and with beehive hair and striking make-up, changed the appearance of modern Indian women. Full throttle Bollywood classics like Mausam (1975) are unthinkable without Tagore. In her private life she married Mansur Ali Khan, so becoming the Begum (princess) of Pataudi, subsequently having three children – Saif, Saba and Soha Ali Khan. The kids grew up (Saif and Soha also became Bollywood stars too) and the lifetime achievement awards started to flow, but Tagore’s curiosity led her into new areas: she was in Mira Nair’s Mississippi Masala in 1991, became a UN Goodwill Ambassador, has publicly criticised discrimination against people with HIV and AIDS, and is Chair of the Indian Board of Film Certification. We thought to ourselves: "what a portrait of India, of Bengal, this Tagore could paint," so we crossed our fingers and invited her to be the centrepiece of our tribute to Bengali film. She has no new movie to publicise here, and scores of calls on her time – she was recently on the Cannes jury – yet she agreed to come. And she’ll do something unusual: not simply tell tales from her own life, so much as from the life of Bengali film, from the movies of legends like Ritwik Ghatak, Tapan Sinha, Mrinal Sen and, of course, master director Satyajit Ray. Who better to open a window on this world for us than its legendary eyewitness and muse, Sharmila Tagore? Her presence at EIFF is a rare privilege and treat.