India’s official entry for the Best International Feature Category at the 97th Academy Awards, Kiran Rao’s 2023 comedy-drama Laapataa Ladies, fell out of the Oscars race on Wednesday as it failed to make the longlist of 15 films that are eventually considered for the final five nominations.
However, Santosh, a Hindi-language crime drama from British-Indian filmmaker Sandhya Suri and featuring Shahana Goswami and Sunita Rajwar, found a spot in the final 15 as the official entry from the UK.
India has won seven Oscars so far, including Best Original Song in 2023 for RRR (MM Keeravani and Chandrabose), but has never won in the Best International Feature Film category. India’s official submissions have only made it to the Oscars longlist four times. The list includes Pan Nalin’s Last Film Show (2022), Ashutosh Gowariker’s Lagaan (2002), Mira Nair’s Salaam Bombay! (1988) and Mehboob Khan’s Mother India (1958).
However, films made on and in India by non-Indians, like Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi (1982), Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire (2008) and Ang Lee’s Life of Pi (2012) have all won big at the Academy Awards.
To be sure, The Elephant Whisperers (2022) by Kartiki Gonsalves and Guneet Monga won in the Best Documentary (Short Subject) category, at the 95th Academy Awards, while Shaunak Sen and Aman Mann’s All That Breathes (2022) was nominated in the same category.
Shortly after Laapataa Ladies was officially nominated by India, it was criticised for being a simplistic portrayal of sociocultural hierarchies like gender, caste, and governance. In the race for submissions was also Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine As Light, which is continuing to bag prestigious awards and nominations, including the Grand Prix at Cannes and at the Golden Globes, respectively. The choice of Laapataa Ladies over All We Imagine As Light invited displeasure from film connoisseurs and critics alike, largely for undermining the depth of storytelling in the latter.
Citing data from the Unesco Institute for Statistics, film historians have pointed out that India accounted for 1,255 feature films made worldwide in 2011, making it the largest film producer in the world — a feat it holds to this day. It is also the second-oldest and largest film industry in the world. Yet, the numbers are abysmally low when it comes to the Oscar nominations, pointing to a possible gap between what Indian film authorities might consider as good storytelling versus the requisites of international recognition.
Film editor Bina Paul, the former artistic director of the International Film Festival of Kerala and a recipient of two national awards, said that the stories are different culturally and there might be a lack of reading them accurately, leading to further inadequacy in representation. While Santosh is a hard-hitting story which is tightly written and directed, Laapataa Ladies is a light-hearted, enjoyable film, she said.
“This cultural difference has nothing to do with whether a film is good or bad or better or worse. The cultural nuance in reading a film is very Indian [for us] which is where we might be losing out,” Paul said. She added that Oscar nominations should not be considered the only parameter for analysing a film’s worth.