The team behind India’s Academy Award entry “Lost Ladies” (“Laapataa Ladies”), including superstar producer Aamir Khan, is mounting a robust international campaign, with Oscar-winning director Alfonso Cuarón lending his support by hosting a special screening of the film.
Khan, one of India’s biggest stars, discovered the project while serving as a jury member for a script competition. “I just fell in love with the script,” Khan told Variety. “The plot itself was really exciting. And along with that, the film was saying some really important things… with a lot of warmth.”
Khan shared the script with director Kiran Rao. After Rao’s involvement, the humor aspects were developed in subsequent drafts. The film explores themes of women’s independence and their right to make decisions for themselves.
The film, produced by Reliance Industries Limited’s content arm Jio Studios, Aamir Khan Productions and Kindling Pictures, is set in 2001 in rural India, and follows two young brides wearing identical crimson veils who get swapped during a train ride to their husbands’ villages after their weddings. It bowed at Toronto before enjoying a successful theatrical release in India.
Drawing from his experience with “Lagaan” (2001), which earned India’s last Oscar nomination in the international feature category, Khan is focusing on maximizing Academy member screenings. “Your effort is to get your film seen by them, and their attention onto your film. And then once they see it, it’s really up to them,” Khan said. “That’s what we did in ‘Lagaan.’ That’s what we’re doing here.”
For the BAFTA campaign, the team is focusing on in-person screenings, including sessions at BAFTA headquarters with filmmaker Q&As. Producer Jyoti Deshpande of Jio Studios underlined the film’s cross-cultural appeal: “Whoever has watched the film has really liked it, and it has resonated with people across different cultures… although it’s a satire, it’s resonating with anyone who watches it.”
Rao highlighted the communal viewing experience as key to their strategy. “As a comedy, it really is a fun film to watch with other people,” she said.
Deshpande praised Rao’s nuanced approach to the material, noting that the film surprises audiences with its storytelling craft, performances, colors and music.
Cuarón is hosting a screening on Dec. 5 in London. “It just shows that there are different filmmakers around the world who are willing to champion the film,” Deshpande said.
The film’s universal themes are already striking a chord. At a L.A. screening, Deshpande said “a lady came up to me and said, ‘It’s taken me 40 years to get my congregation as a rabbi, and isn’t that like lifting off a veil?’”
She said this comment stayed with her “because I thought, absolutely different culture, and you’re watching it and you’re able to relate to it in terms of your own adversity as a woman who tried to do something which was out of the normal. There are many simple home truths that the film punches in a very simple manner, and it gets people’s guards down by being a comedy.”
Regarding India’s Oscar prospects, Deshpande noted: “India has done a lot for the global film industry, in terms of the number of films it makes, the number of languages we have, how rich in culture we are… I think India has come of age and deserves to win an Oscar.”
London-based agency with a global footprint, Media House Global, is handling the film’s BAFTA campaign.