Once again hopes of getting an Oscar home this year have died as India’s official entry to the Academy Awards for best International Feature Film, ‘Laapataa Ladies’, failed to get shortlisted.
Despite great efforts from producer-director duo Aamir Khan and Kiran Rao to promote the film globally, ‘Laapataa Ladies’ could not make the cut at the 97th Academy Awards.
Almost everyone who watched ‘Laapataa Ladies’ enjoyed it thoroughly for the heartfelt emotions, adorable moments, and the subtle yet powerful social commentary it presented on screen. No doubt it is a great film, but ever since the film was nominated for the prestigious category by the Film Federation of India, there have been questions about its worthiness for it.
Was ‘Laapataa Ladies’ the best choice as India’s official entry to the Oscars? Didn’t we have more deserving options? After getting out of the race these questions have once again started to surface and this time more strongly.
Indian music composer and 3 times Grammy Award winner Ricky Kej voiced his opinion regarding the same on the internet saying, “Unfortunately we live in a “Mainstream Bollywood” bubble, where we cannot look beyond films that we ourselves find entertaining. Instead we should just look for good films made by film-makers who are uncompromising in their art.. low budget or big budget.. star or no star.. just great artistic cinema.”
Kej also said that he personally found the film to be “engaging and entertaining” but “the treatment, style and presentation” of ‘Laapata Ladies’ lacked the kind of depth needed for winning the best International Feature Film Academy Award.
‘Laapataa Ladies’ is a very well made film and now that it did not make it through there will be blame games but we also cannot ignore the fact that there were other deserving options available which may have been better suited for the category.
In other News, UK’s official entry ‘Santosh’ by Sandhya Suri that is based in northern India and stars Indian actors like Shahana Goswami and Sunita Rajwar has qualified for the next round of voting in the same International Feature Film category.
Also, ‘Anuja’ by Adam J. Graves with Gunnet Monga as executive producer made it to the shot list for the Best Live Action Short Film. ‘Anuja’ is a coming-of-age story that talks about the internal battle between sisterhood and Child Labour.