Two Indian woman Directors to clash for Oscars

 

Oscars 2025 will see two films made by Indian woman Directors and both  are set in Hindi heartland of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh compete for Best Foreign Feature Film.. This happened after  Britain has submitted a film directed by an Indian woman and with actors from our country as the official entry to Foreign Language Category of the Oscars. Why is this important to India ?  At the Oscars 2024, it was the UK's entry, Jonathan Glazer's The Zone of Interest, that won Best International Feature Film. Will it happen again ? India submitted Laapataa Ladies as Oscar entry.

lThis film Santosh that was UK entry was like Payal Kapadia a film premiered at Cannes but in the Un Certain Regard section. It did not get any award like Kapadia film. In that section the film Konstantin Bojanov's The Shameless, won the Best Actress award for Anasuya Sengupta .

Santosh did not have to come to FFI to get an Oscar entry as it fulfilled all the criteria for submission and that includes theatre screenings in UK. The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) played a crucial role in selecting ‘Santosh’ for this honor. As the organization responsible for choosing the UK’s Oscar submissions, BAFTA evaluates films based on various criteria.

"Santosh", which includes Hindi dialogues, revolves around a newly widowed housewife as she inherits her late husband's job as a police constable and becomes embroiled in the investigation of a young girl's murder. The Indianness of Lapaaraa Ladies was about the veil worn by ladies according  to FFI President , very unique to India and the official statement saying it shows Indian woman can be a rebel and not, a choice that no woman in the world has.

Suri who hails from UP and lives in London tells about the film - "A type of place where these things are just in the DNA of the place. It was about the type of place where this misogyny, this casteism, religious intolerance, it's just all sort of hanging in the air. It is just what that place is it's more an observation than a pushing through of messages, that these things can casually exist in society and to sort of hold a mirror up to that and to ask the question: if we put somebody like Santosh, who was a housewife, in a place like that, how does she process all that,"