Oscars 2023 nominations: S.S. Rajamouli's RRR loses out in the Best Picture race: Top Gun: Maverick, Avatar 2 feature

A bittersweet kind of deal for team RRR as the nominations for the 95th edition of the Academy Awards roll out. Earlier today, on January 24th, the list of contenders for the upcoming Oscars was announced amid tremendous scrutiny and fanfare and for Indian moviegoers, especially, the announcements withheld something special. As hoped, and also expected, Naatu Naatu made the final cut as one of the five nominees for Best Original Song but RRR, the film, and S.S. Rajamouli, the director, could not fare as well.

Both RRR and S.S. Rajamouli were highly favoured by reputed Hollywood trackers in the Oscars 2023 pre-nominations race with the Telugu film, in particular, boasting a great chance of finishing in the top 10. Flanked by a lot of critical praise and the global audience's love, RRR was expected to be nominated for Best Picture but, as it turns out, that wasn't to be. 

The recently-announced list of nominees for the Best Picture category features a mix of major commercial successes like Avatar: The Way of Water and Top Gun: Maverick and arthouse ventures such as Todd Field's Tar, Ruben Ostlund's Triangle of Sadness, and Sarah Polley's Women Talking, among others. Veterans Steven Spielberg, Baz Luhrmann and Martin McDonagh, too, have impressed the jury with The Fabelmans, Elvis, and The Banshees of Insherin, respectively, making the Best Picture cut.

Edward Berger's Netflix anti-war epic All Quiet on the Western Front, too, has been nominated for Best Picture and is the only foreign film in the list of ten films.

Regardless, one would reckon that RRR and the entire team behind it have made strong impressions in Hollywood's major league and with Naatu Naatu arguably the most favoured to win the Oscar for Best Original Song, there is still a lot to look forward to. S.S. Rajamouli, too, lost out on the Oscars 2023 nomination for Best Director.

In the same vein, Shaunak Sen's documentary feature All That Breathes is among the five nominees for Best Documentary Feature with Kartiki Gonsalves' The Elephant Whisperers up for Best Documentary Short Film.