BOMBAY TIMES (September 23, 2018)

Village Rockstars was unanimously chosen by a 12-member jury, which was headed by producer S V Rajendra Singh Babu. The rest of the jury included directors and technicians from every department of filmmaking.

“Village Rockstars deserved this. We haven’t given it a chance; it bagged the chance to represent India at the Oscars. It has the right material. It belongs to a beautiful state of India and depicts a story rooted in the culture of the state. We have also been discussing the road ahead. Rima is an independent filmmaker. Our worry is, how will she manage a sum of Rs 2 crore to promote the film at the right avenues in America for two months. It needs to be shown to critics, Academy members, and needs to be advertised well. We will request the state and the central government to step forth and help her. We will also reach out to film studios in the country to contribute towards her journey to the Oscars. We’re very hopeful that this film will get really far in the competition if it’s given the right aid at the right time. It has already travelled to the most acknowledged film festivals of the world,” says Rajendra Singh Babu.

Director-writer Ananth Mahadevan, one of the key members of the jury, believes that this is one of those rare occasions when a jury has placed its finger on the right kind of film to represent India globally.

“In all these years, we haven’t made one right choice. If you select a bad player and he is underwhelming on the field, it’s the selectors to blame. For years, the jury has not selected the right film as the entry to the Oscars. I joined the jury with thorough research about the entries for the current year from other countries, and past entries from India and other countries. We had to know where we were going wrong. Selecting Village Rockstars was a well-calculated decision because it ticks every box. It’s a film rooted in India, has an international appeal and works beautifully at every level. We tend to think that what works in the mainstream here is what will appeal to the Academy out there, which is never the case. I have a strong feeling that this year, we will finish at the Top Nine if not the Top Five,” says Ananth.

He believes that if 20 pockets contributed Rs 10 lakh each, it could help Rima promote the film well, book ads in the trade papers and get people to watch it at the right time. “I am sure the Academy members will watch Village Rockstars to the end, and not discard it midway. This is the closest we have come to capturing spontaneity in a land ravaged by nature and the coming-of-age of a girl who doesn’t lose the innocence of her childhood. Indian films are believed to carry a poverty label, but here is a film about an impoverished community that holds its head high even in the face of calamities. That’s the message we want to send out everywhere in the world. We’ve made glaring errors for years — who sends a film like Jeans (1998) to the Oscars? The other wrong choices are also pretty evident. We haven’t sent a film by Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Aravindan, Ritwick Ghatak, Shaji N Karun and more films by Satyajit Ray. For years, we didn’t have a filmmaker who could fill the void left by these filmmakers. We’ve finally found Rima Das,” Ananth sums up.