An Inch Close To The Oscars; Will Rajamouli's RRR Create History?

SS Rajamouli's magnum-opus RRR is just an inch away from the prestigious Oscars. With a billion hopes, the team is in the United States to promote their film ahead of the Academy Awards. The Ram Charan-Jr NTR starrer has bagged three nominations at Critics Choice Awards. RRR and Ram Charan, Jr NTR have been nominated for Best Action Movie and Best Actor categories respectively.

The Indian stars will be competing against Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt and Nicholas Cage for Best Actor while RRR is up against The Bullet Train, Top Gun: Maverick, The Woman King, and The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.

Interestingly, around 70% of the winners of the Critics Choice Award have won the prestigious Oscars too. This year, India has four significant nominations at the awards--'Naatu Naatu' song from RRR, Gujarati Film Chhello Show, which is also India's official entry, Shaunak Sen's documentary All That Breathes and Kartiki Gonsalves's documentary The Elephant Whisperers.

In 1983, Bhanu Athaiya became the first Indian to bag the Academy Awards for Best Costume Design for her work in Gandhi (1982). In 2002, ace filmmaker Satyajit Ray was given an Honorary Award for his lifetime of achievement in filmmaking. AR Rahman bagged a double Oscar for Best Original Song and Best Original Score for his work in Slumdog Millionaire. Veteran poet and lyricist Gulzar shared the Best Original Song award with Rahman. For the same film, Indian sound designer Resul Pookutty won the award for Best Sound Mixing.

Indian films nominated for Best Foreign Language Film include Lagaan, Mother India and Salaam Bombay. However, none of them won. It would interesting to see whether RRR can bring the glory home!