Laapataa Ladies Out Of Oscar 2025 Race: Grammy Winner Ricky Kej, Scoop Director Take Dig At FFI

Laapataa Ladies Out Of Oscar 2025 Race: The Kiran Rao directorial was selected as India's official entry for the Best International Feature for the 97th Academy Awards. However, the movie failed to make it to the shortlist, unvlied on December 17. This has invited fury from social media users as well as some celebrities who have questioned the Film Federation of India's selection.

Laapataa Ladies out of Oscars leaves Ricky Kej, industry insiders furious

Grammy award winner Ricky Kej took to his official social media account to slam the selection of Laapataa Ladies as India's official entry. He argued that the selection committee (FFI) has been making wrong selections year after year. He wrote, "So, the @TheAcademy Oscars shortlist is out. #LaapataaLadies is a very well made, entertaining movie (I enjoyed it), but was absolutely the wrong choice to represent India for the best #InternationalFeatureFilm category. As expected, it lost.  When are we going to realize.. year after year.. we are choosing the wrong films. There are so many excellent movies made, and we should be winning the #InternationalFeatureFilm category every year! 
Unfortunately, we live in a "Mainstream Bollywood" bubble, where we cannot look beyond films that we ourselves find entertaining. Instead we should just look for good films made by film-makers who are uncompromising in their art.. low budget or big budget.. star or no star.. just great artistic cinema. Below is the poster of #LaapataaLadies, I am sure most academy voting members dismissed the film just by looking at these."

Not just him, popular Bollywood director Hansal Mehta too took a sly dig at the FFI. He sarcastically wrote on X (formerly Twitter), "Film Federation of India does it again! Their strike rate and selection of films year after year is impeccable."

Laapataa Ladies exits Oscar 2025 race 

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced the shortlists in 10 categories for the upcoming 97th Oscars ceremony on Tuesday (local time). Unfortunately, the list didn't include the Laapataa Ladies, leaving the Indian audience disappointed. Directed by Kiran Rao and produced under the banners of Aamir Khan Productions, Kindling Pictures, and Jio Studios, the movie was released in theatres on March 1, 2024.
 

It starred Nitanshi Goel, Pratibha Ranta, Sparsh Shrivastava, Ravi Kishan and Chhaya Kadam. Set against the backdrop of rural India, Laapataa Ladies revolves around the story of two young brides who get exchanged on a train.
The film's team including director Kiran Rao and producer Aamir Khan already kickstarted the campaign for Oscars 2025. The movie was screened in London recently.