Laapataa Ladies vs All We Imagine as Light Controversy Explained: Why India doesn't get the Oscars

Payal Kapadia's Cannes Grand Prix winner 'All We Imagine as Light' has lost out to Kiran Rao's 'Laapataa Ladies' as India's official 2025 Oscar entry.

History loves to repeat itself in India. Come fall, the Oscar-submission jury falls a little more in esteem by picking an Oscar entry that, in all likelihood, will lose out in the Shortlist race. The reason for that is beyond what the film shows on the screen.

In India, irony dies a thousand deaths every day. It is ironic that National Award-winning and internationally critically acclaimed Assamese director Jahnu Barua, who was the jury chair of India’s Oscar submission committee, would along with 12 other jury members would snub both a National Award-winning and Cannes Grand Prix-winning films to pick a mainstream popular favourite as India’s official entry. Ironic because he has been on the other side nearly two decades ago. In 2006, when Barua’s Hindi film Maine Gandhi Ko Nahin Mara was snubbed for Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra’s Rang De Basanti as India’s Oscar entry, his producer and actor Anupam Kher stepped up to egg Barua to send his film on his own to the Oscars. As the jury chair, Barua should have done better.

For a country that produces the maximum number of films annually, India has landed only three nominations in the best International Feature Oscar category over the last 77 years — with Mehboob Khan’s Mother India in 1957 (India’s first submission), Mira Nair’s Salaam Bombay! in 1988, and Ashutosh Gowariker’s Lagaan in 2001. The country still awaits its first win in the international category.

Earlier this week, the 13-member jury, constituted by the influential industry body Film Federation of India (FFI), ‘unanimously’ selected as India’s official Oscar entry the Kiran Rao-directed popular commercial film Laapataa Ladies, from a pool of 29 films (that demonstrates Hindi supremacy with 12 Bollywood films), including — hold your breath — Animal, Chhota Bheem, Hanu-Man, among others. This longlist (not a selection, any producer who can pay a hefty sum of Rs 1.25 lakh + GST, can submit their film to the FFI) also contained two worthy films — Payal Kapadia’s Grand Prix-winning All We Imagine as Light on systemic social traps for women in India and female friendships and Anand Ekarshi’s National Award-winning Aattam on sexual harassment — which were shorn off the final-five shortlist: Laapataa Ladies and Srikanth in Hindi, Vaazhai and Thangalaan in Tamil, and Ullozhukku (Malayalam).

Last year, India sent the Tovino Thomas-starrer Malayalam survival thriller 2018 as its Oscars entry. And in 2022, the FFI redeemed itself by sending the small, indie film PS Vinothraj’s Koozhangal (Pebbles), which had won the prestigious Tiger Award at International Film Festival Rotterdam.

While the snub to Kapadia’s film — which France had shortlisted earlier as one of its 2025 Oscar entries — sets a new precedent, this is not the first time that a winning-potential film was sidelined by the jury. The most notorious example is Ritesh Batra’s Irrfan-starrer The Lunchbox which was not selected in 2013 despite having earned widespread critical laurels,” writes American film magazine Variety, “Some eyebrows were also raised when global hit RRR wasn’t picked as India’s Oscar candidate in 2022. The FFI saved face, nevertheless, after its official submission, Pan Nalin’s Last Film Show (Chhello Show) made the international features shortlist. RRR was submitted separately and went on to win the Oscar for original song.”

While India, year on year, keeps selecting mainstream films — lengthy films with song and dance, an easy reject for the Academy voters eventually — over smaller, indie films, foreigners are supporting Indian-subject independent films that India has no ecosystem to foster. Like Canadian-Indian Nisha Pahuja’s documentary To Kill a Tiger which made the cut to 2024 Best Documentary Feature Oscar nomination, British-Indian Sandhya Suri’s Hindi film Santosh, starring Shahana Goswami and Sunita Rajwar, is being sent by the UK as its official Oscar entry for 2025.

How the controversy unfolded: A patronising jury

The all-male jury committee of 13 industry veterans picked a film that they think would best represent India in the hallowed quarters of the prestigious Oscars. Kiran Rao-directed Laapataa Ladies is a fine film, but does it stand a chance at the Oscars? More on that later. But first, this manel, which will be called LL Juri hereon, LL is short for ‘Laapataa Ladies’ or missing women, and, well, the proofreader for this “Juri” left the building before its Oscar submission citation was published — in great haste. But more than the films being adjudged and that selected, this “Juri” citation reflects an India where old men sit deciding on matters that concern woman. To give them the benefit of the doubt, some of their intent might have been well-placed, but their words and expression is beyond patronising and derogatory towards all women — and that, my friends, is truly Indian.

A part of the citation reads: “Indian women are a strange mixture of submission and dominance. Well-defined, powerful characters in one world a LAAPATAA LADIES (Hindi) captures this diversity perfectly, though in a semi-idyllic world and in a tongue-and-cheek way. It shows you that women can happily desire to be home makers as well as rebel and be It reflects an India where patriarchy pits one woman against another. entrepreneurially inclined…”

Bravo, uncles! The citation does great disservice to the very idea that the film stands for. Please don’t empower women, don’t decide for them, just move aside and give them the spot you are standing on.

India’s lost Oscar chance?

Anybody who’s anybody in the film fraternity should understand how the Academy Awards works. Laapataa Ladies stands a dim chance to make the cut to the Oscars Shortlist for Best International Film, let alone win. On the contrary, Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine as Light is already a winner. It not only broke India’s 30-year stalemate at the Cannes Film Festival’s main Competition (the last film to be there was Shaji N Karun’s Swaham in 1994) but went on to win India its very first Grand Prix award, the second-highest award at Cannes.

Payal Kapadia (in black) with her cast (from far left) Kani Kusruti, Chhaya Kadam and Divya Prabha, after winning the Grand Prix for her debut feature film 'All We Imagine as Light' at the Cannes Film Festival.

Kapadia became the first Indian woman filmmaker to win the Cannes Grand Prix and “the film is in the process of being one of the most widely distributed Indian indie films of all time. Deals are in place for the US, the UK and France — the three countries with the highest numbers of Academy voters. The selection of the movie as India’s Oscar candidate appeared to be a shoo-in, especially after it made the French Oscar shortlist,” Variety wrote. Kapadia’s film, produced by France’s Thomas Hakim and Julien Graff through their company Petit Chaos, and co-produced by India’s Zico Maitra of Chalk and Cheese Films, was earlier picked by France as one of it four Oscar probables, but lost out to Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Pérez as France’s official Oscar entry.

Last year, France, too, made the controversial decision of selecting Tran Anh Hung’s Juliette Binoche-starrer The Taste of Things (Tran Anh Hung had won the Cannes Best Director award) as France’s Oscar entry over the Cannes’ Palme d’Or winner the Justine Triet-directed Sandra Hüller-starrer Anatomy of a Fall, which won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. After public outcry, this year, France’s revamped 11-member selection committee picked Emilia Pérez as its official Oscar entry for Best International Feature Film category. The Spanish-language French musical won the Jury Prize and Best Actress award for its ensemble cast at the Cannes Film Festival this May.

Given that last year’s Grand Prix winner, Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest subsequently won the Oscar for best international feature last year, Kapadia’s film was shoo-in. Also, Kapadia’s film has an American distributor, unlike Rao’s film, and that seems like a deal-breaker when it comes to the Oscars.

The Academy Awards eligibility criteria

Submissions to best international feature must be in non-English, with subtitles, and be over 40 minutes in duration, and must have released theatrically in their respective countries between November 1, 2023, and September 30, 2024.

While Laapataa Ladies debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2023 and with a successful box office run in India in March this year, followed by a Netflix release and an international distribution handled by Jio Studios, AWIAL premiered at Cannes in May, is set for November 15 release in the US, a November release pan-India, October 2 release in France, and Baahubali star Rana Daggubatti’s Spirit Media, which could only acquire the India rights to the film beginning September, released the film in Kerala theatres on September 21, just in the nick of time to make the eligibility cut for consideration for Oscars submission.

But, the last date of FFI’s announcing India’s official Oscar entry was September 27, according to FFI’s press release released earlier this year, and the final deadline for the film’s submission to the Oscars is October 2. September 27 would have given Kapadia’s AWIAL a week’s time to be in theatres in Kerala, shows went houseful over the only weekend it had, but the FFI announced India’s official Oscar entry (Laapataa Ladies) day’s ahead of the earlier stated date and announced it on September 23.

The institutional beef with Payal Kapadia

The snub to Payal Kapadia’s film sets a new precedent. Payal faced was among those who faced disciplinary action (police FIR, the case is in court) led one of the longest student protests in the history of Pune’s premier institute, Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), as a student in 2015, for 139 days, against the purely “political” appointment of TV-actor-turned-politician Gajendra Chauhan (known for his seedy roles in B-grade and C-grade films) as the institute’s head. The demand of the students was that an eligible person, with an understanding of and love for cinema, be made the head. Payal has since received no institutional support for her films, which have been made with the help of France, and have won awards (Cannes’ L’oeil d’Or for 2021 documentary A Night of Knowing Nothing, and Grand Prix for AWIAL). But both FTII (it agreed to send her diploma film Afternoon Clouds to Cannes only after she was “disciplined and punished”) and India claims her and her films as their own when she bags an award, and yet, snubs it when it can potentially represent India at the Oscars and stands a chance to win.

But to clear the air, the FFI that selects the Oscar submission from India is an independent body, and not a government body, and yet, it played safe for obvious reasons.

Laapataa Ladies versus All we Imagine as Light  

Both the films have a fable-like structure, both centre women stories of empowerment and freedom, both the films have received mixed responses, and both the films have Chhaya Kadam in pivotal roles. In strict terms of filmmaking, Payal’s film is more layered, with contemporary history and gender politics, urban middle-class migrant women’s rights to land, love, identity, and freedom. The second half didn’t work for some who have watched but overall the film, its cinematography, its storytelling shows promise of a future auteur. But like the film’s filter, its Oscars sidelining does leave one feeling ‘blue’, especially since it made history for India not too far back in time. And while I did laugh to Laapataa Ladies, which had its moments in its simple and straightforward storytelling, and praise be to Rao for spotlighting new faces instead of big stars, it is at best a limited, middling film with its rural utopia and a male cop saviour figure. With no complex character or situation, the film lends the lost ladies a new vision and direction to self-fulfilment while AWIAL explores the journeys of self-fulfilment and freedom that its women embark upon.

About AWIAL, the FFI president Ravi Kottarakara told The Hollywood Reporter India, “The jury said that they were watching a European film taking place in India, not an Indian film taking place in India” while the “Indian-ness” of Laapataa Ladies stems from its central plot, which tells the story of two brides who accidentally swap husbands during a train ride. Because both women are wearing a ghoonghat, or veil, concealing their identities, this could only take place in India — as if women in burqas and abayas can't get swapped in other countries. Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter India, JNU professor and film scholar said, “The comment that [Laapataa Ladies] is more about India because of the ghoonghat and other traditional practices is an orientalising perspective. I think we should not be in tune with it. To say that All We Imagine as Light feels more European or looks more European is a bizarre comment. I think films should be valued on the basis of their cinematic art.”

Oscars is all about money

The Oscars shortlist of 15 finalists will be announced on December 17, the Oscars final five nominees will be announced on January 17 and the 97th Academy Awards will take place on March 3 at Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. But before the shortlist, comes a pricey affair of Oscars campaign.

First, the hefty fee of Rs 1.25 lakh + GST is to be paid to the FFI and then, whether or not India selects a film, if the producer wants to send his/her film to the Oscars, do the full theatrical drill in the US as part of Oscar nomination submission requisites, they must be willing to shell out crores of rupees. And this is where scores of great films made by independent filmmakers in India lose out.

Campaigning is expensive business. Remember, SS Rajamouli’s RRR, after being snubbed by the FFI, went alone, and shelled out Rs 8.5 crore to mount an Oscar campaign. It, of course, paid off in the end.

India’s choice this year Laapataa Ladies (available on Netflix) will need the combined might of its producers to see it reach the international feature shortlist. Now, one can argue that producers Jio Studios have deep pockets to run the full Oscars drill to reach the Oscars nominations and Aamir Khan has past campaign experience from when his film the Ashutosh Gowariker-directed Lagaan made it to the Oscars nomination stage (Bosnian anti-war film No Man’s Land picked up the award in 2002). But, pay heed to Oscar-winning producer Guneet Monga who comes with experience of mounting Oscar-winning films (Period. End of Sentence and The Elephant Whisperers).

Aamir Khan and Kiran Rao with their film 'Laapataa Ladies'.

Monga said to Mid-Day: “the biggest mistake that the FFI makes is to choose what they feel is the best film of the lot, as opposed to picking one that might actually stand a chance to score a nomination. No Indian film has been nominated in the Best International Feature category at the Oscars since Lagaan in 2001. While that film’s star, Aamir Khan, is a producer on Laapataa Ladies, and has experience mounting an Oscars campaign, the film itself doesn’t have an American distributor attached. All We Imagine As Light, on the other hand, will be distributed in the US by Janus Films.”  Sony Pictures Classics distributed Lagaan.

“I say this to everybody,” she further added, “if India has to choose a film for the Oscars, it’s very important that you have an American distributor. The more solid American distributor you have, your journey there becomes easier. We can do it on our own, of course. We can spend loads of money, hire publicists… It’s very hard. Even with Elephant Whisperers, I was there for over a month… I’m in awe of the big system that they’ve built there, the whole world shows up and puts their money, time, and energy into it. Please send films that have US distributors. Netflix was there on Period. End of Sentence, and The Elephant Whisperers. They have the mechanism, they know the work… HBO came on board for Shaunak Sen’s film, All that Breathes, and they were running the campaign. What I’m trying to say is, nominations are a very, very big deal. To win is out of a dream. The toughest part of the Oscars is to go from shortlist to nomination. There is work that needs to be done, which we don’t understand. The committee here constantly feels that we should send our best film, as if they are giving the award. But you have to send a film that has American distribution, period. It’s an American award.”

(Views are personal.)