The race to represent India in the Best Foreign Film Category of the 88th Academy Awards, which will be held on February 28, 2016, in Los Angeles, has entered the final lap. Screenings for a 17-member secret jury headed by Amol Palekar are under way at the Telugu Film Chamber of Commerce’s state-of-the-art auditorium in the South Indian city of Hyderabad, and the country’s official entry will be decided by Wednesday or Thursday.
“Thirty films are competing to represent India at the Oscars,” Supran Sen, director-general of the Film Federation of India, entrusted by the Information and Broadcasting Ministry to invite nominations and finalise the official entry, told tabloid!.
“The flood of nominations testify to the undying craze for bagging an Oscar [which is] gripping filmmakers in all parts of India [which is] producing movies in a wide variety of languages. The number of nominations also reveals the happy state of our film industry,” Sen added.
The biggies in the fray are Bahubali, Bajrangi Bhaijaan, Piku, PK and Haider. Interestingly, S.S. Rajamouli-directed Bahubali and Salman Khan-starring Bajrangi Bhaijaan have one thing in common — Vijayendra Prasad, who wrote the story of both movies.
The powerful Telugu Film Chamber of Commerce and its secretary, Kodali Venkateswara Rao, are openly rooting for Bahubali — featuring Prabhas, Rana Daggubati, Sathyaraj, Anushka Shetty and Tamannah Bhatia — which was released in India and abroad in July.
But India’s Oscar jury is notorious for springing last-minute surprises. In 2014, Geethu Mohandas-directed Liar’s Dice, a low-budget experimental film starring Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Geetanjali Thapa, pipped heavyweights such as Shahid, Queen, Mardaani and Mary Kom to the post.
And in 2013, The Good Road left the critically acclaimed Lunchbox behind, triggering a war of words that refused to die down for months.
Some film critics are backing Kuttram Kadithal, a Tamil movie that bagged the Indian National Award for best feature film. Slated for commercial release on September 24, it has already wowed audiences at some film festivals.
Produced by JSK Film Corporation and Chris Pictures, it stars newcomers Ajay, Radhika Prasidhha, Sai Rajkumar and Pavel Navageethan.
Also in the fray are Bengali films such as Ek Nadir Galpo, directed by Samir Chanda, Churni Ganguly-directed Nirbashito, and Asha Jaoar Majhe by Aditya Vikram Sengupta.
Nirbashito, which has been received well after bagging two Indian National Awards, is based on exiled Bangladeshi feminist Taslima Nasreen’s multifaceted relationship with her pet cat.
There are reports that production houses nominated as many as 45 films by September 12, the last date for sending entries. But not all of them met the exacting eligibility criteria, reducing the number of films the jury is evaluating by a third.
Two major controversies have marred India’s annual Oscars drama so far. Firstly, Palekar, a distinguished actor and director, was appointed chairman of the jury mysteriously overlooking his history of denigrating the Oscars to suit his convenience.
Secondly, a Hindu right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party politician-turned-actor, Naresh Kanodia, was inducted into the jury triggering charges of politicising the selection process. Some jury members threatened to boycott the screenings, but differences were quietly patched before they spun out of control.
The deadline for sending the entry to the Academy is October 1. Only those films that have been commercially released in India since October 1, 2014, and that ran for at least a week, are eligible for nomination, for a fee of Rs50,000 (Dh2,799).
