Netflix to stream India’s Oscar entry ‘Chhello Show’

NEW DELHI: Netflix, the American streaming platform, will stream India’s official entry to the Oscars, Gujarati film Chhello Show, starting 25 November. It had beaten SS Rajamouli’s period drama RRR and political drama The Kashmir Files, both touted to be in the race, for the recognition.

The Pan Nalin directed film starring Bhavin Rabari, Bhavesh Shrimali, Richa Meena, Dipen Raval and Paresh Mehta in lead roles, was recently released in limited screens in movie theatres.

Chhello Show, that revolves around a young boy in a small village in Gujarat, who bribes a cinema projectionist to watch films in his theatre, had premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2021. The film follows Tamil drama Koozhangal and Malayalam thriller Jallikattu that have been selected to represent India at the Oscars over the past two years, though neither made it to the final nominations. Zoya Akhtar’s musical drama Gully Boy was the selected entry the year before that. Chhello Show is the second Gujarati film in the past 10 years after Gyan Correa’s The Good Road in 2013 to be selected for the honour.

The selection of the low-budget arthouse Gujarati film as India’s official entry to the Academy Awards has left the movie industry divided and not too hopeful of the country’s chances at the Oscar next year. Not only is the film a remake of a 1988 foreign movie Cinema Paradiso, critics and trade experts say the West is far more fascinated by India’s large-scale colourful action spectacles with song-and-dance than these slow-burn films. Moreover, producers of these commercial potboilers that are never sent as official entries, also have the bandwidth and resources to market the film in the US, a task that SS Rajamouli’s RRR, also in the running, had already begun.