Can Gondhal redefine what represents India at the Oscars?

For decades, India’s Oscar story has been disproportionately Hindi. Gondhal’s selection now puts that pattern under scrutiny. The Marathi thriller has been chosen as India’s official entry for Best International Feature at the 99th Academy Awards, but the significance of the decision lies beyond language. It raises a sharper question: is India beginning to redefine what represents its cinema internationally?

The numbers establish the imbalance. India has submitted 59 films to the category since 1957, but only three — Mother India, Salaam Bombay! and Lagaan — have secured nominations, all in Hindi. None has won. Since 2000, India has sent 26 films, roughly half of them Hindi. Regional-language films have increasingly entered the selection pool, but none has reached the final five. Gondhal is therefore not simply another regional submission. It is a test of whether regional cinema can move from the margins of India’s Oscar narrative to its centre.

This year’s field makes the selection more revealing. The Film Federation of India considered 33 films, including 14 Hindi entries, four each in Marathi, Telugu and Gujarati, and three in Tamil, alongside Malayalam and Nagamese films and a silent film. Among the Hindi contenders were Dhurandhar, Border 2, 120 Bahadur and Main Vaapas Aaunga. Gondhal emerged from that crowded field.

The Dhurandhar comparison is particularly instructive, but not because commercial scale should determine Oscar suitability. FFI jury member Viveck Vaswani said Dhurandhar received four of 14 votes. He said some jurors liked the film, but the panel did not consider it suitable for the Oscar race. The final contest, he said, came down to Gondhal, Naga film Angh and Main Vaapas Aaunga; Gondhal received the jury’s unanimous vote.

So what did the jury see in Gondhal?

Its distinctiveness is embedded in its form. Set in rural Maharashtra, the film unfolds over a single night against the Gondhal folk ritual, combining music, dance, mythology and religious performance with a murder-and-intrigue narrative. Vaswani specifically pointed to that fusion as “completely Indian” and singled out Ilaiyaraaja’s music as another element that made the film unique.

That distinction matters. Gondhal does not make its regional identity incidental. Marathi language, rural Maharashtra, folk performance and the social tensions surrounding faith, gender, desire and hierarchy constitute the film’s narrative world. Reviews have also highlighted its sustained engagement with Maharashtrian culture and its polished technical execution. Davakhar’s festival record strengthens that case: he won the Silver Peacock for Best Director at IFFI in 2025, followed by recognition at Bengaluru, Pune and the Third Eye Asian Film Festival.

Then there is Davakhar’s own proposition.

The director has said his international festival experiences changed how he understood global perceptions of India. He wanted to take Indian culture and heritage to international audiences rather than reproduce a limited external image of the country. His approach was to make the cultural material accessible through a researched mystery-thriller, not to dilute its regional character.

Ilaiyaraaja adds another layer. Gondhal is the first film featuring his music to be selected as India’s official Oscar entry, arriving in the composer’s 50th year in Indian cinema. His work across multiple Indian languages also mirrors the larger question the film now carries: whether “Indian cinema” at an international platform can be represented through multiple regional cultural vocabularies rather than one dominant linguistic centre.

But one selection cannot establish a structural transformation. Gondhal still has to enter the Academy’s process, where a 15-film shortlist precedes the final five nominees.

What its selection does establish is a different proposition. In a year when the field contained some of Hindi cinema’s most prominent mainstream titles, the FFI chose a Marathi film whose strongest claim to international representation lies in its specificity.

The question, then, is no longer whether regional cinema belongs in India’s Oscar conversation. It already does.

The more consequential question is whether India is beginning to see its regional cinemas not as versions of Indian cinema — but as the many languages through which Indian cinema is itself defined.