First Gujarati film to be nominated for an Oscar.
By Deepak Chitnis
WASHINGTON, DC: The Good Road, a Gujarati film, has been selected to represent India for the 2014 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
The selection was made by the Film Federation of India (FFI), the organization that selects the submission every year. Headquartered in Mumbai — the heart of Bollywood, the world’s most prolific film industry — the FFI is composed of film producers, distributors, exhibitors, and studio owners.
Controversy over the decision, which was announced Sunday, has caused a bit of a controversy in India. For some months, it was widely believed that The Lunchbox, a film released in May, starring Irrfan Khan (Slumdog MIllionaire, Life of Pi) and Nawazuddin Siddiqui (Talasash, Kahaani), was a lock for the Oscar submission.
The Good Road, the first Gujarati film to be nominated for an Oscar, directed by Gyan Correa, tells three different stories — that of a poor truck driver, a middle-class couple living in a city, and an 11 year-old child — and how their stories are interconnected by their decisions in life. The format of the film, popularly referred to as “hyperlink cinema,” has been seen in many recent Oscar nominees and winners, such as 2005’s Crash, which won the Oscar for Best Picture.
Anurag Kashyap, producer of The Lunchbox, took to Twitter to convey his displeasure with the FFI’s decision, saying he was “feeling very, very disappointed, can’t comment on the film [since I] have not seen [ti], but it better make it to [the] final five [nominees].”
The controversy is reminiscent of one that occurred in 2005, when Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Black was heavily favored to be sent to the Oscars, only to be overruled in favor of Paheli, a Shahrukh Khan-Rani Mukherjee starrer; the film failed to receive an Oscar nomination.
Only three Indian films have ever been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film: Mother India (1957, the first year of the category’s existence), Salaam Bombay! (1988), and Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India (2001). Recent entries have included Devdas (2002), Rang De Basanti (2006), Taare Zameen Par (2008), and Barfi! (2012), the first two being nominated for the British equivalent of the Best Foreign Language Oscar, the BAFTA.
No Indian film has ever won the award.
To contact the author, email to deepakchitnis@americanbazaaronline.com