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Laapataa Ladies' Oscars drama explained: How India selects 'official' entry, what is Film Federation of India's role
As Laapataa Ladies crashes out of the Oscars race, a look at the selection process of India's ‘official’ entry for the Academy Awards.
For the 23rd year in a row, India - the country that produces the most films in the world each year - will not have a film in the Oscars' Best International Feature Film category. Over these years, several independent Indian films have done the country proud with wins in documentary feature and short film categories. But India's 'official' entries for feature films have not even been nominated. And just like with Laapataa Ladies' exit this year, it has never been without drama. (Also read: FFI jury head Jahnu Baruaa addresses Laapataa Ladies' Oscars exit, calls All We Imagine As Light technically ‘very poor’)
What is the deal with an 'official' entry to the Oscars?
The Best International Feature film category, formerly called Best Foreign Film, honours non-English-language films made outside the US and released in the year of the awards. For this purpose, the Oscars' governing body - the Academy of Motion Pictures, Arts and Sciences - selects a body in each country to pick that country's official selection. In India, the Academy has selected the Film Federation of India (FFI) for this task, something the body has done for decades.
What is the Film Federation of India?
The Film Federation of India is a body of film producers, distributors, and exhibitors from all over India and has roughly 50,000 members from various film industries. Headquartered in Mumbai, the FFI does much more than just select India's official Oscars entry; it also secures the rights of technicians and artists. Notable film personalities like Mehboob Khan, GP Sippy, and J Om Prakash have served as their presidents in the past. The body appoints a selection panel each year that selects India's official entry for the Oscars that year. This year, Laapataa Ladies was selected from a shortlist of nearly 30 films that also included Animal, All We Imagine as Light, etc.
Can there be more than one film from a country?
A country can only send one 'official' entry to the Oscars, but the Academy allows independent entries for other categories as well. Filmmakers can send their titles—if eligible—as independent entries. However, the films are not eligible for the Best International Feature Film category.
The biggest example of this happened in 2022 when Chhello Show was India's official entry, selected by the FFI. However, SS Rajamouli's RRR and Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Gangubai Kathiawadi were also submitted as independent entries in various other categories. In addition, if a film is co-produced by another company from a different country, it can be sent as an official entry from that country. This has most notably happened twice. This year, Sandhya Suri's Hindi film Santosh was sent as the UK's official entry and made it to the shortlist. Similarly, in 2005, Deepa Mehta's Water was Canada's official entry and secured a nomination, losing to the German film The Lives of Others.
What happens after the submission
After the entries are submitted to the Academy, a 30-member International Feature Film Preliminary Committee screens the films and creates a shortlist of 15 films, sometime in December. Following this, English-subtitled copies of all submitted films are screened by the Foreign Language Film Award Committee, which finalises the five nominees announced in January. Only three Indian films have ever been nominated - Mother India (1957), Salaam Bombay (1988), and Lagaan (2001). No Indian film has ever won in the category.
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