The 2023 Oscars are a significant day for Indian film, which has three nominations, including one for best original song and two for documentaries. S S Rajamouli’s three-hour Telugu epic RRR’s popular musical song Naatu Naatu was nominated by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on Tuesday. The song’s nomination follows its Golden Globe win for best song earlier this month, the first for an Indian film. “I’m on top of the world. M M Keeravaani, a music director, remarked, “This is the finest feeling.” He was not shocked by the nomination since he was “quite confident in his work.”
RRR, an unabashed action film, has become a Hollywood favorite despite not being India’s official Oscars selection. In a viral video, Avatar director James Cameron praised Rajamouli, bolstering expectations for a best picture Oscar candidature. India’s best foreign feature submission, Gujarati-language Chhello Show (Last Film Show) by Pan Nalin, was not nominated. “No shade to the movie they did chose, which is really very good, but RRR was a slam dunk,” Variety senior awards editor Clayton Davis said. Two Indian films were nominated for Oscars: All That Breathes for best documentary feature and The Elephant Whisperers for best documentary short. After Writing With Fire in 2021, All That Breathes, about two brothers working to save Delhi’s black kites, is the second Indian long documentary nominated. The documentary, which Shaunak Sen termed a “ecological, emotional and social history” of the city’s oldest neighborhoods, took three years to film. Aman Mann and Teddy Leifer’s 92-minute documentary was also nominated for BAFTAs. Kartiki Gonsalves’ film The Elephant Whisperers follows abandoned elephant carers in Tamil Nadu, India.
Bomman and Bellie, members of an Indigenous community, raise two elephants, Raghu and Ammu, as their own children, “bringing to their tasks an instinctive grasp of the jungle and its precious riches,” according to the Tamil-language film. “How can Oscar voters resist a documentary about two lovely young elephants and their equally charming senior caretakers?” According to Scroll.in, “it will take a pachyderm’s hide – and a heart of stone – to overlook a 41-minute montage of ‘awwww’.” On March 12, we’ll know the Oscars’ Los Angeles location.
