Oscars 2023 nominations: S.S. Rajamouli misses out on Best Director nomination; Steven Spielberg, Todd Field and others make the cut

The much-awaited final list of nominations for the 95th Academy Awards is finally out and not without its share of surprises. On the one hand, team RRR is likely to be celebrating the fact that Naatu Naatu, the hugely popular song, has been nominated for Best Original Song but on the other, one would reckon that both S.S. Rajamouli and his film RRR missing out on the nominations is a bit of shocker.

As announced only a short while ago by the Academy, S.S. Rajamouli, who was among the most favoured in the pre-nominations phase to make it to the Best Director category, lost out to Steven Spielberg, Todd Field and others in the pursuit. The five directors nominated for Best Director are: Steven Spielberg (The Fablemans), Todd Field (Tár), Martin McDonagh (The Banshees of Insherin), Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (Everything Everywhere All At Once), and Ruben Ostlund (Triangle of Sadness).

In the race to the Oscars, S.S. Rajamouli garnered several accolades and a whole lot of praise from fellow filmmakers and audiences alike. Rajamouli was adjudged Best Director by New York Film Critics Circle and remained a frontrunner for many other esteemed awards. Regardless, both the filmmaker and his film RRR attracted a lot of love from moviegoers from across the world with the likes of James Cameron and others too heaping praise for the stellar efforts.

RRR, a film that grossed close to Rs. 1300 crores globally and won the hearts of millions, too, missed out on a nomination for Best Picture. The annual Best Picture category comprises 10 selected contenders with Avatar: The Way of Water, Top Gun: Maverick, Women Talking, Elvis, and others featuring in the list. German film All Quiet on the Western Front, which debuted on Netflix in October of 2022, is the only foreign language film to feature in the Best Picture nominations.