Oscars 2019: India's 'Village Rockstars' out of race, nine films advance to next stage

Village Rockstars, India's official entry to the 91st Academy Awards in the Best Foreign Film category, is no longer a part of the Oscars race, with only nine films out of 87 making it to the next round of voting.

Directed by Rima Das, the Assamese feature, revolved around a group of village children aspiring to become rockstars.

India has so far drawn a blank in the Best Foreign Film category. The last Indian film that made it to the final five in the list was Ashutosh Gowariker's Lagaan in 2001.

Mother India (1958) and Salaam Bombay (1989) are the other two Indian movies to have made it to the top five.

Oscar-winner Alfonso Cuaron's universally-loved, semi-biographical, black-and-white drama Roma is in the list alongside eight other films.

Roma, which is generating a lot of awards buzz and may also earn nominations in the best film category if critics are to be believed, will face tough competition from previous Oscar-winner Pawel Pawlikowski's Cold War. He had won the Oscar for his 2013 film Ida. Japan's Shoplifters, for which director Hirokazu Kore-eda won the Palm d'Or, and Lebanon's Capernaum, which won the jury prize, can also be called frontrunners for the recognition.

Other films in the list are Birds of Passage from Colombia, The Guilty from Denmark, Never Look Away from Germany, Kazakhstan's Ayka and South Korea's Burning.

Academy members from all branches screened the original submissions in the category between mid-October and December 10.

The group's top six choices, augmented by three additional selections voted by the Academy's Foreign Language Film Award Executive Committee, constitute the shortlist.

Academy members eligible to participate in the Nominations round of voting will view the shortlisted films. Members must see all nine films before casting their ballots.

The 91st Oscar Awards will be held on February 24, Sunday, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.