Chhello Show Gears Up For Long Oscar Battle Ahead

Siddharth Roy Kapur and director Pan Nalin are determined to  get the Oscar for India with their evocative Gujarati  masterpiece  Chhello  Show. Apparently the team has pulled out all stops and will spend close to  Rs 10 crores in  seeing the  film  make it into the Oscar shortlist.

10 crores may seem  like chicken feed  when compared with what other Oscar entries from more affluent  firstworld  countries spend. But it is  still a lot of  money considering  Chhello Show’s  shooting budget was  6-7 crore rupees.

Nonetheless Kapur, known to have a keen sense of cinema, has pitched  Nalin’s film into the Oscar  race wholeheartedly.

 Pan Nalin says he has put all his future  projects on  hold. “I need to dedicate the coming   months to  Chhello Show and its campaign for the Oscars.”

 Nalin was  “hurt and  bewildered” by attempts by a section of  the  film industry(the section that has nothing better to do) to malign Chello Show  by  accusing it  of being plagiarized  from  an Italian  film Cinema Paradiso.

 Says  Nalin, “Every nation celebrates and supports their selection to the Oscars meanwhile we end up wasting our time dealing with such malice and baseless allegations. But since last few days we are happy that as more and more people watch  Chhello  Show they are rising in our support.”

About the  struggle ahead  for the Oscar, Nalin says, “We should not forget that Oscars are American awards given away by the The American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The movies must touch and win hearts of those 9 to 10,000 Academy members, it does not matter if it’s a popular film or not. I guess what the Academy looks for is whether  the film or filmmaker has successfully managed to push cinematic boundaries.”