Indias best foreign film Oscar race heats up

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Mumbai: Will it be a romance that develops over paper chits tucked away in lunch boxes, a philosophical inquiry into art, faith and ethics, or a biopic of India's best-known male track-and-field athlete?

Or will it be a Kannada movie about a mind-altering drug, or Sridevi's comeback vehicle?

Among the contenders to represent India in the foreign language film category at the Oscars next year are The Lunchbox, Ship of Theseus and Bhaag Milkha Bhaag. Kai Po Che!, English Vinglish and Madras Cafe are also in the running, as is the Kannada movie Lucia. The Film Federation of India (FFI), which selects the movie that will represent India, will sift through the applications starting 17 September and announce its decision on 22 September.

The Lunchbox, starring Irrfan Khan, Nimrat Kaur and Nawazuddin Siddiqui and releasing across India on 20 September, is one of the strongest contenders. Ritesh Batra's movie has several vocal advocates on Twitter, including the author Salman Rushdie, who declared that "I loved The Lunchbox, big hit at Telluride Film Festival, best Indian film in a long time. Strong foreign film Oscar contender, in my view."

Another heavyweight is Anand Gandhi's encomium-gathering Ship of Theseus, which was released by Disney UTV on 19 July with the backing of filmmaker Kiran Rao. "Ship of Theseus is a film that can represent India in a way that no other film has in the past," Rao said. "It's India like you have never seen before."

Kannada director Pawan Kumar, whose crowd-funded movie Lucia opened on 6 September, said he was undeterred by the consensus that is seemingly building around The Lunchbox. "A lot of Hindi films have been selected (as India's entry) in the past, but we felt that we should apply in any case," Kumar said. Like the other producers, he has paid the application fee of Rs.50,000 to the FFI and arranged for the movie's print to be sent to the FFI, whose members will meet in Hyderabad to decide on the nomination. "It's a good start if a movie made in a regional language at least applies to be selected," Kumar said.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which hands out the Oscars every year, will whittle down the nominations submitted by various countries to nine films, whose names will be announced in January. Select committee members will watch the films over the course of a weekend to further trim down the list to five. The Oscars will be held on 2 March 2014.

India has never won a Foreign Language Film Oscar, a reality that has been blamed partly on the poor quality of films sent from here and poor lobbying by backers of the chosen title. The Academy has shortlisted only three Indian choices in the category: Mehboob Khan's Mother India in 1957, Mira Nair's Salaam Bombay! in 1989, and Ashutosh Gowariker's Lagaan in 2002.

"The focus for us is to get nominated and once that happens, the journey to the final list is much bigger and longer," observed Ajit Andhare, chief operation officer of Viacom18 Motion Pictures, which co-produced Bhaag Milkha Bhaag. "We will use every available resource, as well as our relationship with (parent companies) Viacom and Paramount Pictures. It is not a race that you can hope to win with sheer quality alone"it also requires lobbying."

If The Lunchbox has an advantage over the others, it's not because of the collective clout of its Indian producers, who include Disney UTV, Anurag Kashyap Films Pvt. Ltd, National Film Development Corporation, Dar Motion Pictures and Dharma Productions. Sony Pictures Classics, the independent cinema arm of Sony Pictures Entertainment, will release The Lunchbox in the US in late December or early January. Like its rival, The Weinstein Co., Sony Pictures Classics has a reputation for acquiring acclaimed foreign films and aggressively canvassing for them among Academy members. Two of the five movies in the same category for the 2013 Academy Awards were Sony Pictures Classics titles"No from Chile and Amour from Austria, which took the Oscar.

"The film that needs to be sent is one that has a shot at winning, that speaks to the world and the Academy, and not something that is esoteric," said The Lunchbox's director, Ritesh Batra.

The list of entries from other countries is long and illustrious. It includes Australia's The Rocket, about a 10-year-old boy's attempts to deal with armed conflict, Austria's The Wall, a parable about a woman trapped in a mysterious valley, Saudi Arabia's Wadjda, about an 11-year-old girl who wants to own a bicycle, Chile's Gloria, in which a divorced woman hunts high and low for love, and Singapore's Ilo Ilo, an exploration of the relationship between a Filipino maid and her employers.

Pakistan, which is sending a movie for the first time in 50 years, has picked Zinda Bhaag, a Lahore-set comedy directed by an Indian (Meenu Gaur) and a Pakistani (Farjad Nabi) and featuring several Indians. Naseeruddin Shah appears in the movie, whose editor (Shan Mohammed), cinematographer (Satya Rai Nagpaul) and sound recordist (Vipin Bhatti) are all from Mumbai.

On the off chance that India's nominee doesn't get shortlisted and Pakistan's does, there will be at least some Indians in the audience cheering on the hopes of the subcontinent for the coveted prize.