Kiran Rao: 'The Lens With Which the West Views Indian Cinema Is Entirely Different'

Filmmaker Kiran Rao shares her insights on why Indian films haven’t won an Oscar yet and expresses optimism for ‘Homebound’ as India’s official entry

Filmmaker Kiran Rao shares her optimism for India’s Oscar journey, expressing hope for ‘Homebound’ and discussing the Western perspective on Indian cinema.

Source : IMDb

It has been over 112 years and counting for Indian cinema yet we haven’t yet won the Oscar for any of our features. While the hopes are high this time around with ‘Homebound’ as India’s official entry to the Academy Award, filmmaker Kiran Rao feels while the west may not have a conscious bias towards Indian films, the lens with which it views our cinema is quite different.

The filmmaker recently spoke with IANS celebrating the success of her directorial ‘Laapataa Ladies’ at Filmfare Awards where it won 13 titles.

When asked if there is a certain bias that the West holds towards India or our cinema in general, Kiran told IANS, “I don't know about a conscious bias. But I feel that for every country when they (the Academy) award a film, they look at it roughly through their own lens. And while there is an appreciation for Indian cinema, perhaps a lot of the time it just doesn't tick the boxes of many of the voters there. It's like almost trying to sort of convince people that they automatically may not gravitate to that kind of cinema”.

The director further mentioned that India makes all kinds of films, and she expressed her conviction that at some stage India will have a film that will make the countrymen proud by winning an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.

She continued, “I have great hopes for ‘Homebound’ this year. I think it's a great choice of film to have sent. A film that would resonate with the voters. I think it's also a question of, you know, there's a whole ecosystem around the Oscars. And for us to actually plug into that, we need a certain kind of understanding of distribution, of how films actually go through the Oscar route. And we don't make films thinking of that. We make films thinking of our audience and of the ideas that we want to share, the issues that we feel are important”.

So someday I think that convergence will happen. But in general, I feel awards will only come if there's a natural recognition from that audience that's watching your film. For instance, we got an Academy Award in an International Academy in Japan, which was, I mean, I was not expecting that. I was so delighted to hear it because it means that your film may not be the commercially the biggest film in that place, but there's an appreciation of the work. So I don't think necessarily that awards will always reflect what audiences think or, you know, it's a combination of things. But I do think the day is not far”, she added.

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