By Mabel Pais

The 95th Oscars® nominations were announced on Tuesday, January 24 by Oscar®-winning actor-producer Riz Ahmed and actor Allison Williams live from the Academy’s (The Academy of Motion Picture Arts  and Sciences) Samuel Goldwyn Theater via a global live stream on Oscar.com, Oscars.org and the Academy’s digital platforms, an international satellite feed and broadcast media.

For a complete list of nominees in all 23 categories, visit oscar.com.

This year, the Academy saw its highest ever voter participation in the organization’s history, with members submitting ballots from 80 countries.

Active members of the Academy are eligible to vote for the winners in all 23 categories beginning Thursday, March 2, through Tuesday, March 7. The 95th Oscars will be held on Sunday, March 12, 2023, at the Dolby® Theatre at Ovation Hollywood and will be televised live on ABC television and in more than 200 territories worldwide.

India was honored with nominations in three categories: Documentary Feature Film, Documentary Short Film, and Music (for Original Song).

Documentary Feature Film

ALL THAT BREATHES

Director: Shaunak Sen l Producers: Shaunak Sen, Aman Mann & Teddy Leifer l

In Shaunak Sen’s ‘All That Breathes’ the film-viewer gets an insight to one of the world’s most populated Indian cities where cows, rats, monkeys, frogs, and hogs jostle cheek-by-jowl with people. Here, two brothers fall in love with a bird – the black kite.

From their makeshift bird hospital in their tiny basement, the ”kite brothers” care for thousands of these mesmeric creatures that drop daily from New Delhi’s smog-choked skies. As environmental toxicity and civil unrest escalate, the relationship between this Muslim family and the neglected kite forms a poetic chronicle of the city’s collapsing ecology and rising social tensions.

“The city itself – replete with the many human-animal ensembles in it – features in the film as a character,” says Shaunak Sen. “As a method, I am deeply interested in looking at everyday banal phenomena that usually occupy the fringes of our vision, as objects of rigorous study. Through this film, I want to harness the enchantment of the sky. I want audiences to leave theatres and instinctively look up – to think of the sky and the birds in it as novel, wonderfully alien things.”

Nadeem Shehzad and his younger brother Mohammad Saud featured in the film are former bodybuilders from the Chawri Bazar area of New Delhi. They started treating black kites in 2003. Since then, they have together treated more than 20,000 injured birds. Nadeem was recently appointed as an Honorary Wildlife Warden of Delhi, and in 2021 spent three months in the U.S. for training with bird rescue organizations. Today, Nadeem and Saud continue to work tirelessly to treat black kites and other birds of prey through the organization they set up in 2010: ‘Wildlife Rescue.’

‘All That Breathes’ has received the following awards

** 2022 Sundance Film Festival World Cinema Grand Jury Prize for Documentary **

** 2022 Cannes Film Festival Prize for Best Documentary (L’Œil d’Or) **

** 2022 BFI London Film Festival Grierson Award for Best Documentary **

** 2022 Hong Kong International Film Festival Golden Firebird Award in Documentary Competition **

** 2022 IDA Documentary Awards for Best Feature Documentary, Best Director, Best Editing, and Pare Lorentz Award**

** 2022 Cinema Eye Honors Awards for Outstanding Nonfiction Feature, and Outstanding Cinematography **

** 2022 Gotham Award for Best Documentary Feature **

** 2022 Asia Pacific Screen Award for Best Documentary Film **

‘All That Breathes’ was nominated against

‘All the Beauty and the Bloodshed’ – Producers: Laura Poitras, Howard Gertler, John Lyons, Nan Goldin and Yoni Golijov

‘Fire of Love’ – Producers: Sara Dosa, Shane Boris and Ina Fichman

‘A House Made of Splinters’ – Producers: Simon Lereng Wilmont and Monica Hellström, and

‘Navalny’ – Producers: Daniel Roher, Odessa Rae, Diane Becker, Melanie Miller and Shane Boris

Documentary Short Film

THE ELEPHANT WHISPERERS

Director: Kartiki Gonsalves l Producers: Kartiki Gonsalves & Guneet Monga l India l 2022 l Color l PG l 41m

Bomman and Bellie, a couple in Tamil Nadu’s Mudumalai Tiger Reserve (South India), devote their lives to caring for an orphaned baby elephant named Raghu, forging a family like no other that tests the barrier between the human and the animal world.

‘Elephant Whisperers’ was in competition with

‘Haulout’ – Producers: Evgenia Arbugaeva and Maxim Arbugaev

‘How Do You Measure a Year?’ – Producer: Jay Rosenblatt

‘The Martha Mitchell Effect’ – Producers: Anne Alvergue and Beth Levison

‘Stranger at the Gate’ – Producers: Joshua Seftel and Conall Jones

Music (Original Song)

India has made history with ‘Naatu Naatu’ (film, ‘RRR’) as the first Asian song in 2022 to win a Golden Globe Award in the category!

NAATU NAATU (from film ‘RRR’)

Director: S.S. Rajamouli l 2022 l India l Telugu w/Eng subs l 3h 2m

Music: M.M. Keeravaani l Lyric: Chandrabose

From writer-director S. S. Rajamouli (Baahubali) comes the international blockbuster that has enchanted movie audiences of all ages with its jaw-dropping action sequences, swooning romantic intrigue, infectious musical numbers— particularly, the sensation ‘Naatu Naatu’—and rousing central friendship between two pre-Independence revolutionaries, played by Telugu-language megastars Ram Charan and N.T. Rama Rao, Jr. (better known as Jr. NTR).

“The emotions have to be grounded and real, they can’t be over the top. If you can capture your audience with emotion, you can fictionalize any part of history, anyone or anything,” says S.S. Rajamouli.

From an original story by V. Vijayendra Prasad, the historical action epic RRR (short for Rise, Roar, Revolt) follows the fictionalized paths of real-life freedom fighters Alluri Sitarama Raju (Ram Charan) and Komaram Bheem (Rama Rao) as they come together in 1920s Delhi to battle the nefarious British Raj for the rescue of a kidnapped girl from Bheem’s tribe.

In the movie, Raju comes to represent fire, while Bheem symbolizes water; their coming together as friends makes them an indomitable force. The plot explores the undocumented period in the lives of two very different freedom fighters during the height of the Raj—but R.R.R. is at its heart a story about India coming into its own.

‘Naatu Naatu’ won the nomination in competition with

‘Applause’ from ‘Tell It like a Woman’ – Music and Lyric by Diane Warren

‘Hold My Hand’ from ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ – Music and Lyric by Lady Gaga &  BloodPop

‘Lift Me Up’ from ‘Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’ – Music by Tems, Rihanna, Ryan Coogler and Ludwig Goransson; Lyric by Tems and Ryan Coogler

‘This Is A Life’ from ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ – Music by Ryan Lott, David Byrne and Mitski; Lyric by Ryan Lott and David Byrne.

(Mabel Pais writes on The Arts and Entertainment, Social Issues, Health & Wellness, Cuisine and Spirituality)