Tollywood Biggies Don’t Need an Official Entry for the Oscars

Getting an Oscars is considered as the highest cinematic honour for actors and technicians of film industries across the globe because of its long standing history and craze. So, securing a nomination is itself a big achievement first because of the fact that every nomination goes through multiple rounds before entering the Oscars.

Ahead of the 99th annual Academy Awards next year, the committee has made some sensible changes to the existing rules to make the competition more intense and encouraging in different categories. As per the latest reports, the Academy has announced three major changes which will come into effect immediately and will be considered for the entries of 2027.

In a big boost to International Feature Films category, non-English films can now qualify even after the country didn’t submit such films as their official entry by winning the top prize at one of the six approved international film festivals viz. Berlin, Busan, Cannes, Sundance, Toronto and Venice.

This means, a film that wins honours at any of these renowned festivals can still make it to the Oscars nomination even after missing an official entry from its country.

This gives a great opportunity for crowd pleasing commercial blockbusters in countries like India which produces numerous films in such category every year with flawless performances and commendable technical values but still gets rejected by the committee which finalizes the official entries representing the country.

This rule will be an encouraging move to upcoming pan-India biggies like Varanasi, Kalki 2, Raaka and Ramayana as these films have universal content that can cut across audiences from different countries. There is no need to worry about country’s official submission any more because these movies have the potential to resonate with international audiences if they get screened at those six film festivals and also win the coveted awards.

Previously, SS Rajamouli’s RRR was snubbed by the Film Federation of India when it selected Gujarati movie Chhello Show (Last Film Show) as country’s official entry to Oscars. But, the team secured and entry by aggressive campaigning in a different category called ‘ For Your Consideration’ and ultimately won the Best Song for Naatu Naatu’ though it missed out on other categories.

Another big change announced by Oscars is about ‘Actors’ nomination. Previously, unlike every other category, if an actor had movies that gained two or even three of the top five votes, only the performance that got the most votes would be eligible for final nomination. Now, this is modified and an actor can be nominated for his performances in multiple films for next Oscars.

Besides these two decisions, the Academy has made it clear that only performances performed by humans will be eligible in acting categories. The same also applies to writing categories as only human-authored screenplays are eligible for Oscars.