"Academy must have dismissed Laapataa ladies looking at posters," says 3-time Grammy winner Ricky Kej

L-Ricky Kej; R- Laapataa Ladies

Filmmaker Kiran Rao's 'Laapataa Ladies', India's official entry for Best International Feature at the 97th Academy Awards, failed to make it to the Oscars shortlist. Post this, three-time Grammy winner Ricky Kej and filmmaker Hansal Mehta took to social media to criticise India's film selection for the Oscars by the Film Federation of India.

Ricky Kej blames poor selection of movies for India's loss at Oscars

After the Oscars shortlist was announced, musician Ricky Kej took to X (formerly Twitter) and wrote, "So, the @TheAcademy Oscars shortlist is out. #LaapataaLadies is a very well made, entertaining movie (I enjoyed it), but was absolutely the wrong choice to represent India for the best #InternationalFeatureFilm category. As expected, it lost."

He further criticised FFI for their selection of films and also took a dig at Laapataa Ladies poster. "When are we going to realize.. year after year.. we are choosing the wrong films. There are so many excellent movies made, and we should be winning the #InternationalFeatureFilm category every year! Unfortunately we live in a "Mainstream Bollywood" bubble, where we cannot look beyond films that we ourselves find entertaining. Instead we should just look for good films made by film-makers who are uncompromising 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 academy voting members dismissed the film just by looking at these."

However, he further clarified that he loved the film by Kiran Rao but feels it was not made for the Oscars. "I re-iterate. Laapataa Ladies is a good film, well made, I myself found it engaging and entertaining.. handing subject matter well.. I even watched it a second time with friends. It is a film which fits well within the Indian mainstream.. and there is nothing wrong with that. But the treatment, style and presentation was not something that could ever win the "International Feature Film Category" at the Oscars. The poster itself, with the retro-collage look, the doodles, and the comic fonts does not show depth, that is usually preferred in this category," he added.

Hansal Mehta takes a dig at FFI

Mehta took to X (formerly Twitter) to express his disappointment. He shared a screenshot of the shortlisted films in the Best International Feature category and questioned India's film "selection" process.

"Film Federation of India does it again! Their strike rate and selection of films year after year is impeccable," he wrote.