From 'Natkhat' To 'Soorarai Pottru', These Indian Films Are Running In The Race For Oscars 2021

Earning a nomination at the prestigious Oscars awards ceremony is something that India has always aspired for. The only films to have earned a nomination so far from India include Mother India (1957), Salaam Bombay! (1988) and Lagaan (2001).

What is the nomination process like?

It's voting that determines which films, filmmakers and actors etc. will become Oscar nominees. The process is quite long and complicated and involves more than 8000 voting members and more than 100s of eligible films, directors, actors etc.

To even be eligible for a nomination is a big deal. That also involves strict procedure and specific guidelines to be followed. Most films don¡¯t even qualify for running in the race.

This year several films have entered the Oscar 2021 race from India. Here are the films on which people have high hopes from this year.

Shameless

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Short films can also cast a deep and long lasting impact. This one written and directed by Keith Gomes is India's official entry for Academy Awards 2021 in the Best Live Action Short Film category. The fifteen-minute film starring Sayani Gupta, Hussain Dalal and Rishabh Kapoor is about the loss of human spirit among people because of the increasingly technology saturated modern world.

The story follows Dalal's character who works from home and orders food online regularly. He finds himself trapped by Gupta's pizza delivery girl.

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Resul Pookutty, who had won an Oscar for Slumdog Millionaire earlier, has worked on the project as the sound designer.

"The trailer of Shameless truly captures our indifference towards the disadvantaged. The short displays the sense of entitlement that well-off youth in India carry with them. The working class are considered inferior and often abused just for doing their job", said presenter Shabinaa Khan.

Saving Chintu

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As the industry is gradually opening doors to LGBTQ+ community, this Tushar Tyagi film highlights the same and also focuses on issues like HIV-AIDS and child adoption.

The film produced by Ritika Jayaswal and Adil Hussain is a tale of a queer couple living in New York who comes to India to adopt Chintu, a child suffering from HIV-AIDS. This 30-minute movie has been inspired from real-life incidents. Filmmaker Tyagi had once met a man who was illegally adopted by his American parents from India. They wanted to adopt him as soon as possible and start his treatment for malnourishment and tuberculosis. This is what inspired Tyagi to make this movie. He also drew inspiration from another man he met in Rishikesh who was running a kids¡¯ shelter.

The film was screened at various film festivals including Iris Prize LGBT+ Film Festival, Out on Film Atlanta festival and South Asian Film Festival of Cincinnati.

Natkhat

Vidya Balan in Natkhat / Twitter

Another short film starring Vidya Balan has made it to the Oscars 2021 race. The 33-minute long film on rape culture showcases the relationship between a mother and a son who lives in a patriarchal home.

Directed by Shaan Vyas and produced by Ronnie Screwvala and Vidya Balan, the film was screened at several prestigious international film festivals including Tribeca¡¯s We Are One: A Global Film Festival, London Indian Film Festival in London and Birmingham, South Asian Film Festival ¨C Orlando/Florida Film Festival, Indian Film Festival Stuttgart (where it won the German Star of India Award), and the Indian Film Festival of Melbourne.

Tailing Pond

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"What if millions of people were poisoned causing serious illness, birth defects an suffering for generations... What if hundreds of thousands of people died? What if it could have been prevented? What if the Indian government knew and did nothing? It's all true..."

This is what the teaser of the documentary short-film directed by Saurav Vishnu says.

The film traces the impact of uranium mining on the local population of Jadugora in Jharkhand. The government mines uranium in the village which remains hidden from world's eyes and dumps its waste in the Tailing Pond. The film gives us a glimpse of the status of human rights in India.

The film has travelled to film festivals including New York Indian Film Festival, Jaipur International Film Festival and many more. The film won the Best Film award at both festivals.

Bittu

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After winning multiple accolades and being screened at 18 festivals, short-film Bittu is now running in the Oscars 2021 race.

Based on a true story, Bittu is a heartwarming tale of friendship between two young school-going girls based on a backdrop of a tragic incident.

Directed by Karishma Dev Dube, Bittu had won Student Academy Awards in 2020, which also "makes it eligible for the 2021 Oscars in the best live action short category," reports Variety.

The film is being supported by Ekta Kapoor, Guneet Monga, Tahira Kashyap Khurrana's Indian Women Rising newly launched cinema collective called Indian Women Rising (IWR), an endeavor to support and empower Indian female talent in cinema.The film will now be presented by the IWR throughout its campaign.

"Bittu is a film that seeks to give voice to an overlooked community, and follows a fierce little girl who refuses to be forgotten," Dube was quoted as saying.

Jallikattu

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Regional films are finally getting their due credit. Last year when Gully Boy was chosen as India's official entry for Oscars 2020, a lot of people thought that several good films were snubbed. This time, Malayalam movie Jallikattu has been selected as India's official entry for the International Feature Film category at the Oscars, and everyone is ecstatic about it.

Directed by Lijo Jose Pellissery, the film is based on the short story of Maoist by Hareesh, follows a bull that escapes from a slaughterhouse in a hilly remote village and the entire village men gather to hunt down the animal.

Soorarai Pottru

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Tamil movie Soorarai Pottru, which released on OTT platform Amazon Prime, is about a common man with a big dream of launching a low-cost airline in the 1990s.

The movie starring South Indian star Suriya has joined the Oscar race under multiple categories. The film is eligible to be nominated under multiple categories that include Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director as well as Best Original Score among others.

The film has already been selected for screening at 78th Golden Globe Awards, which will be held in Los Angeles on Feb 28, 2021.

The film, which is a fictionalised version of the book Simply Fly written on the life of Air Deccan founder Captain GR Gopinath, was released on Nov 12.

It remains to be seen which of these Indian films will be nominated at the Oscars 2021.