It has been triple delight for Indian cinema at the Oscars 2023. Three Indian films have bagged nominations at the prestigious awards and perhaps the smallest, most low-budget of the lot has been the short docu drama The Elephant Whisperers. The film was nominated in the Best Documentary Short Film category. The announcement was made on Tuesday night. The award ceremony will take place in Los Angeles on March 12.
Directed by Kartiki Gonsalves, The Elephant Whisperers is the story of a couple in South India, Bomman and Bellie, who 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. The film was released on Netflix amid critical acclaim.
The film is up against Haoulout, How Do You Measure a Year, The Martha Mitchell Effect, and Stranger at the Gate in the documentary short film category. Interestingly, The Elephant Whisperers is not the only Indian documentary to manage an Oscar nomination this year. Shaunak Sen’s All That Breathes has been nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the Academy Awards as well. Joining these two is Telugu blockbuster RRR, which has secured a nomination in the Best Original Song category for its dance number Naatu Naatu.
Like The Elephant Whisperers, All That Breathes is also a wildlife documentary. The Shaunak Sen film follows the lives of two brothers -- Mohammad Saud and Nadeem Shehzad -- who run a bird hospital in Delhi dedicated to rescuing injured black kites. The two 'kite brothers' care for thousands of these creatures, which fall daily from Delhi's smog-choked skies.
RRR is a fictionalized tale of two real-life revolutionaries. The period action-drama minted over Rs 1100 crore worldwide and was a critical success as well. The three films have given quite a few reasons to cheer for Indian cinephiles.
