India’s official entry Liar’s Dice is out of Oscars’ race after it failed to make the cut in the Academy’s shortlist in the best foreign film category.
Nine films advanced to the next round of voting in the category for the 87th Academy Awards out of 83 movies that had qualified in the category.
Liar’s Dice , a road drama about a tribal woman’s journey to find her missing husband, is the debut film of Geetu Mohandas. It stars Geetanjali Thapa and Nawazuddin Siddiqui in lead roles.
The shortlist will be winnowed down to five by specially invited committees in New York, Los Angeles and, for the first time, London from January 9-11, viewing three films each day and then casting their ballots.
India has never won an Oscar in the best foreign film category. The last Indian film that made it to the final five nominees was Ashutosh Gowariker’s Lagaan for the 74th Academy awards in 2003.
Mother India and Salaam Bombay are the other two Indian films to have made it to the top five.
The 87th Academy awards will take place on February 22.
The films that have made it to the shortlist this year include Wild Tales , an Argentinean film by director Damian Szifron.
One of the strongest contenders is the entry from Estonia, Tangerines , a film on civil war within the former Soviet countries, is in the list along with Georgia’s entry Corn Island by George Ovashvili.
Sweden’s entry Force Majeure by Ruben Ostlund is in the list so is Netherlands’ Accused , based on a true story of Lucia de Berk, which generated a lot of buzz at many international festivals.
Mauritania’s Timbuktu and the quintessential Russian tragedy Leviatha by Andrey Zvyagintsev are also in the shortlist.
Pawel Pawlikowski’s black-and-white Polish drama Ida , which won the Best European Film prize at the European Film Awards in Riga, is in the list while the Academy selected The Liberator from Venezuela by Alberto Arvelo.
