Kiran Rao's 'Missing Ladies' out of Oscar race, Hansal Mehta takes a jibe at FFI's 'strike rate'

Entertainment Desk. Missing Ladies, India's official entry in the Best International Feature category at the 97th Academy Awards, has been knocked out of the race.

Filmmaker Hansal Mehta and composer Ricky Cage have slammed the Indian Film Federation after Kiran Rao's satirical film Missing Ladies, India's official entry for the Oscars 2025, failed to make the shortlist in the Best International Feature category. Hansal sarcastically took aim at FFI's “poor strike rate and selection of films year after year”.

Hansal shared the shortlist for the Best International Feature category at the 97th Academy Awards on his X handle late on Tuesday night. He sarcastically wrote in the caption, “Film Federation of India does it again! His strike rate and selection of films year after year is unmatched.”

Many X users echoed Hansal's stance. One of them commented, “Indian films missing!” Another wrote, “AWIAL will always be a whatif,” referring to Payal Kapadia's All We Imagine as Light (AWIAL), which was considered by many to be a strong contender for India at the Oscars 2025 but was not selected by the FFI. to be done.

A third user wrote, “Bandit Queen not being selected was even more ridiculous. The censors stopped the film from releasing, so it could not be eligible,” recalling how Shekhar Kapur's crime drama Bandit Queen was not selected as India's official Oscar entry by the FFI in 1995. PC Sriram's 1994 Tamil action thriller Kuruthipunal was chosen instead.

Grammy Award winning musician Ricky Cage also shared some posters of the missing ladies on his X handle. He wrote a long note in the caption: “#LaapataaLadies is a very well made, entertaining film (I loved it), but it was absolutely the wrong choice to represent India for the Best #InternationalFeatureFilm category. As expected, it lost.

He said. “When will we realize.. year after year.. we are choosing wrong films. There are so many great films made, and we should win the #InternationalFeatureFilm category every year,”

Ricky concluded, “Unfortunately we live in the bubble of 'mainstream Bollywood', where we can't see beyond the films we ourselves find entertaining. Instead we should only look for good films made by filmmakers who do not compromise in their art. Low budget or big budget.. star or no star.. just great artistic cinema. Below is the poster of #LaapataaLadies, I am sure most of the Academy voting members would have rejected the film just by looking at it,”

Laapataa Ladies out of Oscar race
The Hindi film directed by Kiran Rao is not part of the Oscar race. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) on Tuesday announced that there is a competition among the final five to make it to the list of 15 feature films.

However, British-Indian filmmaker Sandhya Suri's film Santosh, starring Indian actors Shahana Goswami and Sunita Rajwar representing the UK, has made it to the list which also includes France's Emilia Perez, I'm Still Here (Brazil), Universal Also included are Language (Canada), Waves (Czech Republic), The Girl with the Needle (Denmark) and Germany's The Seed of the Sacred Fig. The final nominations for the Oscars will be announced on January 17.

In September, the FFI unanimously selected The Missing Ladies as India's official entry to the Oscars from a list of 29 films, which also included Bollywood hit Animal, Malayalam National Award winner Aattam and Cannes winner All We Imagine as Light.