This year, too, the jury assembled by the Film Federation of India (FFI) has dutifully ignored Payal Kapadia’s groundbreaking festival-favorite All We Imagine As Light, the first Indian film to win the Grand Prix, the second-highest prize at the Cannes Film Festival. It has chosen Kiran Rao’s Laapataa Ladies as India’s official submission to Oscars 2025 instead.
The film, which debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) in 2023 and is now available on Netflix after a successful theatrical run, is a hopeful, broad-strokes comedy of errors. Backed by Aamir Khan Productions and Jio Studios, it follows the journeys of two young brides Phool (Nitanshi Goel) and Jaya (Pratibha Ranta) as they get swapped mistakenly on their way home after their wedding.
Renamed Lost Ladies for the Oscar campaign, the social satire is Rao’s second directorial feature 14 years after she made her debut with Dhobi Ghat (2010).
Notably, Laapataa Ladies is the fourth film from Aamir Khan Productions after Lagaan (2001), Taare Zameen Par (2007), and Peepli Live (2010) to be chosen as India’s official entry for the Oscars. If it wins, it will be the first to bag the fabled honor, finally breaking India’s dry spell at the Academy Awards.
In 1958, another Indian film came close to clinching the trophy but famously lost to the Italian entry Nights of Cabiria (1957) by one vote. It was Mehboob Khan’s Mother India (1957), starring Nargis, Sunil Dutt, Rajendra Kumar, and Raaj Kumar.
It’s not like India hasn’t won at the Academy Awards ever. Music maestro A. R. Rahman has two Oscars. One for Best Original Score and the other for Best Original Song which he shared with veteran lyricist Gulzar. Both for the 2008 blockbuster Slumdog Millionaire, the Danny Boyle film that conclusively broke the glass ceiling and tumbled out unfathomable Indian talent eager to bedazzle the world.
Bhanu Athaiya was the first Indian who successfully jumped borders and sidestepped xenophobia to bring home the glittering trophy for designing the costumes of Richard Attenborough’s 1982 biographical drama Gandhi. Celebrated Bengali filmmaker Satyajit Ray followed soon after when he was felicitated with an Honorary Academy Award in 1992 for his cinematic achievements.
Now with the Oscars trying to get inclusive and an increasing number of Indians foraying into Hollywood, the Academy is finding it difficult to ignore anymore the country that produces the largest number of films across the globe in any given year. As a result, Indians shone extra bright last year at the the 95th Academy Awards.
Music composer M. M. Keeravani and lyricist Chandrabose bagged the award for the best original song Naatu Naatu from SS Rajamouli’s sprawling period-drama RRR (2022). That was not all. Director Kartiki Gonsalves and producer Guneet Monga also returned with gleaming trophies. They won in the Best Documentary Short Film category for The Elephant Whisperers (2022).
If one zooms out a little and looks at India’s submissions to the Oscars from Mother India (1957) to Salaam Bombay! (1988) and Lagaan (2001), or Village Rockstars (2017), Gully Boy (2019), Chello Show (2021), even this year’s Laapataa Ladies, an underlying theme gets crystallised. We try to hard-sell poverty and orientalism through the films that we choose to send, thus feeding into the deeply problematic, entrenched stereotypes and exoticism, thinking it will win us money and glory.
However, we cannot be more erroneous in our approach. Thanks to social media and large sections of Indians emigrating to every habitable place on earth, the world knows there’s a lot more to India than abject poverty, flowing gutters, and impoverished children running naked on streets. Why can’t a film like Tamasha go to the Oscars? Though rooted in a very specific milieu, it dabbles with issues that are universal.
The same holds true for hordes of other well-made, keenly fleshed-out stories that reach our screens and speak to us in a way that resonates, but never make it to the Oscar stage. It is when we stop fetishizing our idea of how we think the West perceives us and send films that truthfully tell the story of India and its billion people (and not just one sub-sect), that we will truly stand a chance.
The Academy is yet to announce its shortlist and nominations for the Best International Feature Film and all the other categories. But as of now, Laapataa Ladies is in competition with films such as Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Pérez (France), Walter Salles’ I’m Still Here (Brazil), Maura Delpero’s Vermiglio (Italy), and Maite Alberdi’s In Her Place (Chile).
To be hosted by popular television-host Conan O’Brien, the 97th Oscars will be held on Sunday, March 2, 2025, at the Dolby Theatre at Ovation Hollywood, Los Angeles.
