Mumbai, September 20 - India has picked Gujarati-language coming-of-age drama film
Chhello Show (Last Film Show) as India's official entry to the Best International Feature Film category at the 95th Academy Awards.
Directed by Pan Nalin, the movie follows a nine-years-old Samay from Chalala, a village in Saurashtra in the Gujarat state of India, who entered a cinema hall projection booth by bribing Fazal, a cinema projector technician, and watched several films through summer. He became engrossed with cinema for life.
The movie received massive critical acclaim. Indiewire's David Ehrlich called the movie a "coming-of-age story" with "an ethereal take on the magic of movies". Prahlad Srihari of Firstpost called the film "an ode to movie-going, as movie-making" while Tanzeem Pardiwalla of Mashable India rated it 5 out of 5. She praised the direction, cinematography, theme, story, and performances.
"Chhello Show" won the Golden Spike for Best Film at the 66th Valladolid Film Festival (Seminci) held in October 2021. It was nominated for the Tiantan Awards at the 11th Beijing International Film Festival. It premiered in the Spotlight section of the 20th Tribeca Film Festival on 10 June 2021 and became the first Gujarati film selected for the festival section.
Meanwhile, the two films that were being speculated to be India's entry for the category were "The Kashmir Files" and "RRR", with the latter gaining the most traction in the West. Both the movies, especially "RRR", however, are still capable of earning nominations in other Oscar categories.
Stay tuned...
