Hansal Mehta calls out FFI after Laapataa Ladies misses the spot in Oscars 2025

India was anxiously anticipating Laapataa Ladies to emerge victorious in the Oscar 2025 shortlist battle. However, yesterday brought sorrowful news for Indians as Aamir Khan and Kiran Rao's movie failed to secure a spot.

Director Hansal Mehta criticized the Film Federation of India after The Academy did not include Laapataa Ladies in the Oscars 2025 shortlist. The Kiran Rao film represented India as its official Oscar entry in the Best International Feature category. On Tuesday, it was announced that the movie did not make it to the list of nominees. Subsequent to this update, Hansal expressed his disappointment on social media and ridiculed FFI for their decision.

Sharing the list of films that have been shortlisted for the category at the 97th Academy Awards, Hansal wrote, “Film Federation of India does it again! Their strike rate and selection of films year after year is impeccable."

Besides Hansal Mehta, musician Ricky Kej also slammed FFI's choice of nominating Laapataa Ladies as India's official entry for this year's Oscars.

“#LaapataaLadies is a very well made, entertaining movie (I enjoyed it), but was absolutely the wrong choice to represent India for the best #InternationalFeatureFilm category. As expected, it lost," Ricky wrote.

“When are we going to realize.. year after year.. we are choosing the wrong films. There are so many excellent movies made, and we should be winning the #InternationalFeatureFilm category every year! 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," he added.