Oscar Nomination 2022: India's "Writing With Fire" Shortlisted As Documentary Feature

Writing With Fire in Oscar race: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science announced the shortlist for ten categories which include films, documentaries and songs, amongst others, for the 94th Academy Awards. From India, Writing With Fire has been shortlisted under the Documentary feature category.

Writing With Fire has been selected by the members of the Documentary Branch and the results were determined by votes. It has been selected out of 138 documentary features that were considered eligible.

Made by Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh, the documentary feature covers India's only newspaper run by Dalit women, Khabar Lahariya, which covers rural news and is headed by Meera Devi, their chief reporter. The subject revolves around the women reporters of the organisation going on the ground for stories and the shift from print journalism to digital as per the news market demands. Their struggle with adapting to digital news production and the constant casteism and misogyny while reporting also forms a big part of the feature.

Suggested Reading: 2021 Roundup: Indian Women Journalists Who Made Headlines With Their Work

Rejoicing over the selection in the shortlist along with documentaries like Ascension, Attica, Billie Eilish: The World's a Little Blurry, the director of the documentary Rintu Thomas tweeted, "#WritingWithFire is on the @TheAcademy Shortlist. What a moment for my entire team behind this indie Indian doc. What a moment for the Indian documentary community. We are richer with the stories we choose to tell, big love @KhabarLahariya (emojis)"

The other documentary features selected are Faya Dayi, The First Wave, Flee, In The Same Breath, Julia, President, Procession, The Rescue, Simple As Water, Summer Of Soul and the Velvet Underground.

Although India's entry to the Oscar for the feature film, Koozhangal (Pebbles) failed to make a cut in the top 15. Directed by Vinothraj PS, it is a story about an alcoholic man and his son, who set off to get the mother back home from her parent's place. It was screened at multiple international festivals and became the first Tamil film to win the Tiger Awards and the Shanghai Film Festival. It has been nominated for the Spirit Awards in the United States.

(Feature image credit: Writing With Fire YouTube)