The TIFF route to the Oscars

Could Angh, an Indian film set among the Konyak-speaking tribe in a remote Nagaland village, make its way to the shortlist for an Oscar award this year? Until now, it would have had to be nominated as India’s official entry for the Oscars.

 

Earlier this year, the US Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which hands out the Oscar awards, announced that six international film festivals, including the ongoing Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) and those in Berlin, Busan, Cannes, Sundance, and Venice, could send their top award-winning non-English films to compete for an Oscar for the Best International Feature Film. TIFF’s Chief Programming Officer Anita Lee said, “The Academy was looking for ways in which greater films that were not necessarily the official selection by a country could also be considered. It’s a wonderful way in which international auteur cinema can get a greater group.”

 

Robyn Citizen, director of programming at TIFF, added, “The thinking is that the role of film festivals, particularly when it comes to juried competitions — and those juries are industry experts, talent, filmmakers — should have some say in the films that go on to be eligible for the Academy Award for Best International Film.”

 

The new direct pathway could help selection committees in several countries, including India, to re-evaluate how they choose the national entries for the Oscar awards. Meenakshi Shedde, a veteran international film festival delegate and senior programme advisor, South Asia, to TIFF, noted that India’s official selections – and omissions — have proved controversial in the past. “Payal Kapadia’s remarkable All We Imagine as Light was famously rejected by the Film Federation of India, as ‘lacking Indian-ness’,” she recalled of the film that won the Grand Prix award at the Cannes film festival two years ago. Festivals, she added, have teams of programmers rigorously selecting the best films globally, so chances of peculiar decisions or influencing by vested interests is minimised.

 

After Platform celebrated its tenth anniversary last year, TIFF has expanded the section’s lineup as well as its international jury panel in 2026. Platform is TIFF’s only competitive section and was created in 2015 to highlight “exceptional directorial vision and auteur voices”.

 

It’s a label that Theja Rio, the young Naga director of Angh, has earned with his outstanding debut feature selected as one of the 12 Platform films at TIFF. 

Angh director Theja Rio

 

Angh tells the story of a Naga village chief, played with tremendous gravitas and dignity by Anghlong Konyak, struggling to counter the influence of an American Christian missionary on his community members in the 1960s.

 

The exposure provided by TIFF and the potential pathway to the Oscars is critical to a film like Angh, set in a region and language not even most Indians would be familiar with. Recalling his challenges while making the film, Rio said, “Nagaland has very little filmmaking infrastructure, and as a result, many of our cast and crew members were first-time participants in a film production. On top of that, I probably made things even more difficult for myself by setting the story in the 1960s, deep in the jungles of Nagaland, and choosing to shoot on 16mm film.”

 

Despite the hurdles, Rio has delivered an arresting film filled with moments of family tenderness, an ancient tribe’s respect for nature, and a tribal leader’s bewilderment and helplessness in battling an existential threat to his community’s identity. “Although the film is fictional, missionaries had a profound influence on Nagaland during that era, and incorporating that history felt like a meaningful way to enrich the world of the film,” Rio said.

 

At TIFF, Angh will compete with films like Miwa Nishikawa’s Children Untold from Japan, Gabriel Martins’ On Behalf of My Son from Brazil and Irene Dionisio’s Italian film, Idda. If it wins the Platform prize to be announced on September 20 and goes to the Oscars, it could compete with India’s official entry.

 

Only three of India’s official entries to the Oscar awards have ever become final nominees — Mother India, Salaam Bombay and Lagaan. Shedde said, “While the Film Federation of India has had senior filmmakers on its jury choose the best film, I don’t think it has been aligned with the main criterion: Choosing a film likely to win at the Oscars. This would require studying previous Oscar winners, patterns on why they won, and considering likely contenders with deep pockets to sustain an Oscar campaign.”

 

This year, with its expanded approach, the Academy has opened its doors to international filmmakers a little wider.

 

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The writer is a Toronto-based independent journalist.

 

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