Several Indian non-fiction films have received international recognition recently. Nominations were scored by Shaunak Sen’s All That Breathes (Documentary Feature Film) and Kartiki Gonsalves’s The Elephant Whisperers (Documentary Short Film) in the 2023 Oscars.
Sen’s film about two brothers in Delhi fighting to save the city’s black kite population is the second Indian film to get a Documentary Feature nomination at the Oscars — the first was Writing with Fire by Sushmit Ghosh and Rintu Thomas, about the Dalit women-run news organisation Khabar Lahariya, which was nominated last year. Indian documentaries have won some prestigious awards.
All That Breathes won the documentary prize at Cannes last year, with Payal Kapadia’s A Night of Knowing Nothing winning it in 2021, besides an Amplify Voices Award at Toronto. And at the ongoing Sundance Film Festival, Sarvnik Kaur’s Against the Tide, the third Indian entry in the world documentary competition in many years, is a strong awards contender.
The story of Indian non-fiction filmmaking’s growing international recognition is remarkable for how little support and visibility it gets within the country, whether from the state or private bodies. Hopefully, with this year’s Oscars, things will get better for documentaries at home.