National Award-winning Tamil film Visaranai, directed by filmmaker Vetrimaaran, dropped out of the Best Foreign Language Film category of the upcoming 89th Academy Awards.
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On Thursday, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced the nine films that would advance to the next round of voting. With this, Vetrimaaran’s brutal drama joins Hey Ram, Court, Lagaan, Mother India as the Indian films that almost made it through Oscars’ flawed voting system.
In an interview with Deccan Chronicle, Vetrimaaran said that he was proud to have represented India:
“It was a great campaign and turned out to be an eye-opener for us. We met a lot of talented and important people from Hollywood. One of the most memorable moments was when legendary filmmaker Werner Herzog watched Visaranai and appreciated our efforts. If not for Dhanush and Vinod Kumar [Producer and Executive Director of Wunderbar Films respectively], this wouldn’t have been possible at all,” he said.
Visaaranai, starring Dinesh Ravi, Anandhi and Aadukalam Murugadoss in the lead roles, is based on M Chandrakumar’s novel Lock Up.