Can India do an encore at the 96th Academy Awards?

A month from now, the Oscar fever will catch on. Last year Naatu naatu from S S Rajamouli’s Telugu period action drama RRR and The Elephant Whisperers directed by Kartiki Gonsalves won awards. So this year, expectations are sky-high. India’s official entry for the 96th Academy Awards, ‘2018: Everyone is a Hero’, is not just the highest-grossing Malayalam film of all-time. With dubbed Hindi, Tamil, Kannada and Telugu versions and OTT release, it is also one of the highest grossing Indian films of 2023 and its writer-director Jude Anthany Joseph believes it has a 75 per cent chance of winning.

Siddharth Roy Kapur, one of the producers of the Gujarati film ‘Chhello Show’ (The Last Film Show) which made it to the shortlist in the Best International Feature Film category last time, asserts that for a film to go from becoming the selection of a country to the Oscar shortlist, it has to have the ability to reach out across cultures and speak to the common humanity in people. “That is what the voting members of the Academy look for in a film in the foreign language category,” he reiterates.

He adds that to boost its chances, it is important to get a good publicist who will take the film to the right people, show it in the right circles and make sure that as many voting members as possible watch it. In a conversation with Showtime Anthany Joseph informed that they have appointed a PR team to organise screenings and press meets to promote the film at the Oscars. “We are going about it professionally. Our first priority is to get into the final 15; voting starts on December 14 and the shortlist will be announced on December 21. I’ve already been contacted by many media persons and I will stay in LA for at least a month, meeting people and making the film more visible. We have also spoken to distributors about re-releasing the film and will finalise those plans soon,” he elaborated.

Having been on the same road, Roy Kapur agrees that it is important to be physically present in LA and be involved with the entire publicity machinery around the annual event. “It’s important that you are talking to as many members of the Academy as possible to make sure that your film is in the conversation at that point of time,” the filmmaker maintains.

While ‘Chello Show’ was the official Indian entry, ‘RRR’ entered independently and submitted nominations in several categories, including Best Picture, Best Direction, Best Actor (for both Jr NTR and Ram Charan), Best Supporting Actress (Alia Bhatt), Best Supporting Actor (Ajay Devgn), Original Song and Original Score. Underlining the difference, Dharmendra Mehra, Honorary General Secretary of the Film Federation of India (FFI), points out that the selection committee, drawn from members of the FFI in different departments, decides which film will represent India in the International Feature Film Category. Producers can also send their films directly in the General Category. “But while the former is up against just 93 films from across the world, a General Category entry has to compete with 1,500-2000 and must have an uninterrupted, one-week theatrical release in the US,” he explains.

This year, a 16-member selection committee headed by Girish Kasaravalli, 14-times National Award-winning writer-filmmaker, unanimously voted for ‘2018’ from among the entries — films released between December 1, 2022 and October 31, 2023 — after a marathon screening spell in Chennai. “In the eyes of our selection committee, every filmmaker is equal, irrespective of their bank balance or global influence. For them, it’s about sending the best film to represent the country, and given the worldwide concern over the environment and climate change, the Malayalam survival drama inspired by the devastating floods that ravaged Kerala in 2018 appears to be an apt choice,” reasons Mehra.

Anthany Joseph, who himself was forced out of his home by the floods, confides that every person he’s spoken to after the Oscars selection believes India’s chances of winning best foreign language film are very high after the ‘RRR’ triumph. “‘Naatu naatu’ has created an aura of excitement around Hindi cinema. We will do our best to bring the Oscar home again,” he promises.