There’s something deeply frustrating about watching Indian films dazzle global audiences, dominate festival circuits, make it to prestigious lineups across Cannes, Berlin, Toronto, Sundance, and then fall flat at the Oscars. It’s not because we lack great cinema. Far from it. Some of the finest, most emotionally layered, visually stunning, and narratively powerful films are being made right here. But when the time comes to show up on the biggest award stage, we either don’t make the cut or get token recognition for a song or a moment that barely scratches the surface of what Indian cinema truly is. NaatuNaatu winning was brilliant, yes, but that can’t be the bar we keep celebrating. It feels like the world loves to cheer for our rhythm but not always for our soul.
Take Homebound, for example. A beautiful, deeply intimate film that had all the ingredients for global acclaim. And yet, it was ignored. Snubbed. Quietly pushed aside in the Oscar conversation. And the worst part? This isn’t new. It’s a pattern. The kind of international acknowledgment Indian cinema gets still seems limited to what fits a certain expectation, colour, chaos, celebration, maybe a bit of suffering. Anything that demands a more nuanced gaze? Too often, it’s met with silence.
But the real question isn’t just why this happens. The real question is: What are we doing wrong in how we position ourselves? Because make no mistake, it’s not always about merit. The Oscars aren’t just about good cinema. They’re about visibility, perception, lobbying, timing, and sustained presence. The films that win aren’t always the best; they’re the best positioned. And we haven’t cracked that code. Not yet.
International film festivals and the Oscars operate on two completely different operating systems. Festivals are about curation. They’re driven by programmers and juries who are actively looking for fresh voices, new grammar, untold stories. There’s a hunger there to discover something authentic. That’s why you’ll often find Indian indie and regional films doing well in these spaces; they’re raw, rooted, daring. But the Oscars? That’s not discovery. That’s campaigning. That’s a full-blown industry with publicists, screenings, whispers in trade rooms, coverage in Variety and Deadline, strategic releases, and emotionally smart marketing. The Academy is a massive machine. And to enter it, you need more than just a good film. You need a roadmap.
What hurts even more is how India treats its Oscar strategy. One film. Once a year. That’s it. A single submission carrying the weight of an entire country’s cinematic expression. We’ve got thousands of films being made in over 20 languages every year, but when it comes to the Oscars, we’re down to a single entry. That one film is expected to represent the full spectrum of Indian storytelling, from folklore to urban realism, from high-concept myth to kitchen-sink drama. It’s unfair to the film and to the country.
Other nations don’t do this. They create an ecosystem. Korea didn’t win an Oscar out of nowhere with Parasite. They’d been building towards it for years, establishing auteurs, creating curiosity, showing up in festival circuits, releasing films with global appeal. So when Parasite arrived, it didn’t feel like an outsider; it felt inevitable. In contrast, Indian films often arrive like visitors, not residents. We don’t stay long enough in the global imagination. We don’t play the long game.
And yes, let’s address the elephant in the room: bias. It exists. The West still sees Indian cinema through the lens of stereotype, musicals, poverty, family drama, exotic lands, and arranged marriages. There’s a subconscious slot Indian stories are placed in, and when we show up with something that breaks the mould, a queer love story, a quiet meditation on grief, a gritty psychological drama, it doesn’t always register. But bias isn’t the only villain here. Sometimes, we just don’t make ourselves legible to the system. We expect recognition without fully entering the conversation.
This is where our own festivals come in. Indian film festivals need to stop being only about glitter and gala screenings. They should act as springboards for international positioning. We need to use IFFI, MAMI, and others as launchpads, not just to show off what we’ve made, but to build global strategies. Connect our filmmakers to international programmers, give them access to festival publicists, and train them in the art of building a global presence. The real job of a festival isn’t just to celebrate cinema, it’s to carry it forward into the world.
We also need to stop relying only on official channels for global placement. One government submission can’t carry the weight. Instead, multiple films can and should be campaigned independently across different Oscar categories, Best International Feature, yes, but also Documentary, Animation, Screenplay, and even Short Film. Let’s flood the space with our talent. Let’s stop asking permission and start taking up space. The National Film Award juries may rethink their approach to the canvas of global cinema in the light of movies competing in the feature and non-feature categories.
At the heart of it all, we need a mindset shift. We have already arrived as a cinematic powerhouse. We don’t need to prove we belong; we do. What we need now is a strategy. Continuity. And self-belief. We need to invest in storytelling, but also in story-framing. We need to believe that our cinema, whether it’s a Tamil neo-noir, a Marathi courtroom drama, a Khasi-language coming-of-age story, or a Kashmiri political thriller, deserves to be on the world stage, not as an anomaly, but as a regular, recurring voice.
We’re no longer the exotic outsider knocking on the gates. We are the culture that shaped global music, global cuisine, global fashion, and yes, global cinema too. The Oscars will catch up. But first, we have to show up like we belong. Not for a song. Not for a season. But for the long haul.
(The author is a Commentator and Writer on Cinema, Branding, Media Management and Geo-Strategic Communication. Co-Authored the book “When Branding Met The Movies” published by National Book Trust recently. (Views are personal.)
Inputs provided by Zoya Ahmad and Vaishnavie Srinivasan