Navigating The Oscar Race: South Asian Cinema’s Quiet Surge As Shortlist Voting Begins
When awards season chatter begins around the last quarter of every year, “Oscar buzz” pretty much overshadows every other awards body. Hollywood studio-backed films with recognizable actors, directors and/or producers that made an impact during the year begin appearing on a plethora of “best of” lists that are discussed, analyzed and given substantial media attention. However, this year a handful of South Asian films from the sub-continent are quietly gaining traction, contending for nominations for the 97th Academy Awards, despite a lack of Hollywood studio support and financial bandwidth.
One such film is Lost Ladies, directed by Kiran Rao — India’s official Oscar entry for Best International Feature. Produced by Bollywood giant Jio Studios and Indian megastar Aamir Khan – whose film Lagaan was nominated for an Oscar in 2002 in the same category – over a month of screenings in Los Angeles and New York has helped familiarize the U.S. film industry with the movie.
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“It’s a long journey. There are lots of players – and much bigger players – in this sort of awards race, so to speak,” acknowledges Rao. “I think, for us, we’ve really accomplished what we set out to [do], which was to create an awareness about the film and screen it wherever possible, and interact with the filmmaking communities wherever we’ve gone. The idea really was to get to a bigger audience and spark these conversations around the issues that the film touches upon – about the struggles that girls and women in India go through, and what can happen if we give girls the chance to determine their own futures.”
Lost Ladies tells the story of two young brides from different villages in India who get mistakenly swapped while on a train and “end up unwittingly going on this journey of discovery, affirmation and solidarity,” quoting Rao.
If it has been an uphill trek for the Indian studio feature, then it’s been a bigger challenge for some of the short films contending for a Live Action Short nomination.
Los Angeles-based director Adam J. Graves and producer Suchitra Mattai entered the nomination race when their film Anuja won the Best Live Action Short at the Oscar-qualifying HollyShorts Film Festival in August. A story set in New Delhi, India, it centers on Anuja, a 9-year-old girl who works in a garment factory with her older sister Palak. When Anuja is offered a rare opportunity to attend school, she is forced to make a life-changing decision that will determine both the sisters’ fate.
Graves and Mattai, both independent filmmakers, realized the importance of partnering with professionals in the industry who understood both the issues of child labor and the intricacies of navigating the awards landscape. Their collaboration with producer Guneet Monga Kapoor — who won an Oscar for the documentary short The Elephant Whisperers in 2023 — was a crucial development for the film.
Explains Graves, “Having someone as notable as Guneet on board, who has an incredible track record of producing award-winning films and box office hits, and who understands the international landscape both in India and America, is a huge boost when you have limited resources.”
Monga Kapoor, whose own work has focused on sensitive social issues, adds, “The story [of Anuja] tackles the incredibly serious issue of child labor in a unique and sensitive manner. Anuja isn’t portrayed as a victim but as the heroine of her own journey. So, when I come across a good film like Anuja that has faced all the hurdles, made independently and with a lot of heart, I make it a point to support it loudly.”
Another live action short from India that has made the Oscar qualification grade is Me, Raani by Shivani Mehra. Set in a village outside Mumbai, it tells the story of a single mother’s desperation for societal status and her desire to buy a birthday gift she can’t afford for her daughter. Marking her directorial debut, Mehra won the Grand Jury Prize in October at the Best of India Short Film Festival (U.K.), which led to a theatrical release hosted by Shorts TV in San Francisco to qualify it for the Live Action Short Film category.
In contrast, a feature that has attracted significant industry and media attention for earning India its first-ever Grand Prix win at Cannes back in May, is director Payal Kapadia’s narrative debut, All We Imagine As Light. The film, which is eligible for Oscar nominations in all categories, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay, follows two women who work together as nurses in a Mumbai city hospital. Through their evolving friendship and connection to other women in their workplace, the story examines the complexities of female solidarity in an urban environment.
If South Asian films face financial challenges to garner attention during awards season, it’s the increasing sophistication of storytelling that has also given an edge to these filmmakers.
In the case of Pakistani filmmaker Usman Riaz’s feature animation, The Glassworker – Pakistan’s official Oscar entry for Best International Feature and a candidate for Best Animated Feature – it’s Riaz’s passionate dedication of telling the story through a Miyazaki-style Japanese hand drawn 2D animation technique that has won significant attention to the film.
“I love the craft of 2D animation, specifically hand-drawn animation,” says Riaz. “Pakistan has no industry for animation, so I started my own hand-drawn animation studio. I love the earlier works of Disney like Pinocchio, a big influence on the story, but it was not possible [to do it] in Pakistan. So, I thought that the Japanese aesthetic was a more pragmatic approach to do in Pakistan. Disney animation focuses a lot on the fluidity of the animation versus Japanese animation, which is much more pose oriented, and the drawings lead into each other versus a continuous motion. I love the Studio Ghibli [founders] Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata, and of course Walt Disney – they are my animation heroes. It’s been a lot of work, a lot of drawings, and I’ve lived on this journey [of making the animation] for 10 years.”
Set during a time of war and in a location loosely inspired by Pakistan, The Glassworker is about two childhood sweethearts – an apprentice glassblower learning from his father, and a gifted violinist struggling to find her own unique voice. The story follows both characters through their formative years as opposition from their fathers and the growing threat of war affects their relationship.
Notably, the live action films – All We Imagine As Light, Lost Ladies, Anuja and Me, Raani, are stories about women and girls in India, though each presents a distinct narrative, vision and tone.
Kapadia’s focus was to explore friendships between women and the city of Mumbai. “I wanted to tell a story about women coming to Mumbai to work,” she says. “It’s about two women [Prabha and Anu] who are sort of friends, mostly because they are in Mumbai. It’s a friendship that is unique to cities, especially Mumbai, which is expensive, and you have to get a roommate. That person may or may not be your friend, may become your friend, [and] you might hate them. So, this friendship between the two of them is kind of like that. Then there is the friendship between Prabha and Parvati [the cook]. There are these women who are financially independent, without being in a family structure and away from their families. So, I wanted to propose a utopian kind of set up where we could possibly think of a new kind of family, a family of friends, of these three women who support each other.”
For Me, Raani director Mehra it was about exploring the relationship between a mother and daughter, and the daughter’s increasing awareness of her mother’s struggles. “We always think parents are the ones that are going to be the saviors, but sometimes a child can do things that a parent wouldn’t expect out of them. The mother wants to gift a carrom board game to her daughter for her birthday, well aware of the fact that she can’t afford it, but she still tries to make it happen. When her daughter notices that her mother is unable to do it, she steps forward and creates a solution, which turns out to be the gift her mother wanted to give her. It’s about taking care and being there for each other.”
Graves, on the other hand, found himself in a unique situation working on the story of Anuja as a white American man. “There is a history of white dudes picking up their camera and heading off to parts of the world filming, India included,” he states. “That’s not me. I have a background in South Asian studies, [and] I’ve lived in India for years. The film is largely inspired by my wife and producing partner Suchitra Mattai, who’s an artist of South Asian descent. Her family comes from [the state of] Uttar Pradesh, who were brought by the British to Guyana in the early 1900’s as indentured laborers. So, when we were researching the issue of child labor in India, we discovered that it disproportionately impacts young girls, who are compelled to work rather than attend school because their education’s often not as valued as that of their male siblings. So, it became important for us to make sure that the story highlighted this issue.”
The growing number of South Asian films making waves internationally reflects a broader shift in the global market, with increasing collaboration between international filmmakers and distribution companies. For example, The Glassworker has partnered with the French sales agent Charades, while All We Imagine As Light works with U.S.-based distributor Janus Films.
The tides are slowly shifting in the subcontinent too, where these mature homegrown stories are impacting domestic support, giving options to filmmakers for a better push during the international awards season.
“There are some mainstream filmmakers who are supporting independent films,” Kapadia points out. “We had [Indian actor and producer] Rana Daggubati of Spirit Media who distributed All We Imagine As Light in India, which was an interesting crossover. So, it’s happening.”
Rao, too, observes that the rise of streaming platforms has created new opportunities for Indian films to reach wider, global audiences. “It’s a really interesting time in our country. Due to the emergence and growth of streamers, we are seeing interest in films from different languages across the country, and from very diverse backgrounds – be it stories by and about women, non-binary and queer people, [and] people from different castes. There’s a huge diversity in storytelling that’s possible because of our incredibly complex society, and so we are seeing the emergence of new and strong voices.”
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