The winners for the 95th Academy Awards were announced yesterday, and they were streamed live in India on Disney+ Hotstar. Three Indian films namely ‘RRR’ (for Naatu Naatu song), Shaunak Sen’s ‘All That Breathes’, and short documentary ‘The Elephant Whisperers’ were nominated. And out of them, ‘RRR’ and ‘The Elephant Whisperers’ made India proud by winning the Oscars.
The third Indian title, that is, Shaunak Sen’s globally acclaimed documentary film ‘All That Breathes’ lost to ‘Navalny’, a political documentary which focuses on Russian leader Alexei Navalny and his poisoning.
Although ‘Navalny’ has evidently won the hearts of the Oscar 2023 jury members, is the film really better than and did it deserve an Oscar over its Indian counterpart ‘All That Breathes’? Let’s see what some popular reviews’ portals think about how good both these films are.
Rotten Tomatoes
On reviews aggregation portal Rotten Tomatoes, the Indian documentary film ‘All That Breathes’ currently holds 99% critics score. On the other hand, ‘Navalny’ too boasts of the exact same critics score of 99% on the website. Moreover, both the movies have got the ‘Certified Fresh’ status on RT.
Winner: Tie
Metacritic
On another reviews’ aggregation website, ‘All That Breathes’ has received a fantastic metascore of 87. And ‘Navalny’ is trailing behind with a metascore of 82.
Winner: All That Breathes
IMDb
On international movies database portal IMDb, Shaunak’s Sen’s ‘All That Breathes’ has surprisingly got a user rating of just 6.9/10. And ‘Navalny’ currently holds an IMDb user rating of 7.7/10 as of now. However, the ratings for ‘All That Breathes’ may improve after the film releases in India as the number of votes are presently not sufficient.
Winner: Navalny
Overall Winner: Tie
So, as you can see, it’s a tie between the two documentary films ‘All That Breathes’ and ‘Navalny’ if we consider the three websites Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic, and IMDb. And despite ‘All That Breathes’ arguably being the stronger Oscar contender before the winners were announced, it was ‘Navalny’ which eventually bagged the coveted trophy for the ‘Best Documentary’ category.
Coming to the main question about whether Navalny deserved an Oscar win over ‘All That Breathes’, judging the quality of these two films can be subjective and depends on the viewer’s taste in films. In this case: the Oscars 2023 jury, who clearly favoured Navalny!