Paoli Dam is an Indian actress who started her career with the Bengali television serial Jibon Niye Khela (2003). She then worked in Bengali television serials such as Tithir Atithi and Sonar Harin; the former ran for six years on ETV Bangla. Dam spent her childhood in Kolkata, earning a postgraduate degree in chemistry from Rajabazar Science College. Initially, she wanted to become a chemical researcher or a pilot. Her debut Bengali film—Teen Yaari Katha, directed by Sudeshna Roy and Abhijit Guha—began in 2004, but was not released until 2012. Dam's first film release was Agnipariksha, directed by Ravi Kinagi. Between 2006 and 2009, she appeared in five Bengali films, coming into prominence with the 2009 Kaalbela, directed by Goutam Ghose.

Kaalbela is a 2009 Bengali film directed by Goutam Ghose. The film stars Parambrata Chatterjee, Paoli Dam, Soumitra Chatterjee and Santu Mukherjee. This film is set against the background of the Naxalite movement. Based on a 1980s novel by Samaresh Majumdar, the film sets itself up, quite self-consciously, within a certain tradition of films, namely radical political Bengali cinema of the 1970s and 1980s. It thus establishes an intertextuality and a certain connection with them. By situating itself and the story it has to tell, within this matrix of the 1970s radical Bengali cinema, Ghose anchors the film squarely within that time. The mood and the events certainly, but even the way black and white shots are used, underlines a somewhat documentary – and thus temporally limited – way these sequences are put to use.Mixed Response at Indian Box office.