As Oscar Nomination Voting Nears, Documentary Films from India Gain Prominence On The Global Stage

deadline.com:

When the Oscar nominations for Best Documentary Feature were announced last year, a big underdog made the cut: Writing with Fire.

The film lacked both a major U.S. distributor and streaming partner. It hailed from India, a country with a vast narrative filmmaking tradition, but less of an imprint in documentaries.

Directors Sushmit Ghosh and Rintu Thomas told the triumphant story of India’s only newspaper run by Dalit women in an industry dominated by men, and in the process made Oscar history.  “The fact that this was the first Indian documentary feature to be nominated became just such big news,” Thomas told Deadline last year. “A billion people sort of erupted in joy because we’re a film-loving nation.” The passage of a year has given Thomas and Ghosh a chance to reflect on the emergence of Indian documentary filmmaking onto the world stage. “What we are witnessing now are the blossoms from seeds of consistent negotiations that nonfiction filmmakers in India have done for decades,” the directors tell Deadline. “There are no realistic support structures for funding, mentoring, and distribution – so documentary filmmakers in India have found their own disruptive ways to make films, create their audiences, and doggedly protect their voices.” They add, “Globally, a few things have evolved, which have created a space for our stories to be told in our own voices.

There has been a steady momentum of reckoning about who is telling whose stories. This means that film funding institutions, film festivals, and distribution networks are being led by a more diverse leadership actively creating a space for narrative voices from outside North America and Europe.