Ignored for the Oscars in 2013, Ritesh Batra-directed “The Lunchbox” was nominated for the British Academy Film Awards (BAFTA) in London. “It’s an honour to be nominated alongside the finest films of the year, much credit to my whole team and the work we did together. It’s a good validation to tell Indian stories to the world, if we don’t tell our own stories, no one else will,” Batra said.
In 2013, contrary to expectations, the film starring Irrfan Khan, Nimrat Kaur, and Nawazuddin Siddiqui was not selected by the Film Federation of India (FFI), the apex body of the film industry, as India’s entry to the Academy Awards in the ‘Best Foreign Language Film’ category. The FFI’s panel of filmmakers had instead chosen Gyan Correa’s “The Good Road.”
At the Bafta, “The Lunchbox” will compete with “Ida,” a Poland-Denmark co-production, Russian film “Leviathan,” Brazil-UK co-production “Trash,” and Belgian film “Two Days, One Night,” according to the Bafta.
Born out of a Ritesh Batra script at the NFDC Screenwriter’s Lab, “The Lunchbox” was the most celebrated project at the Work-In-Progress lab at the NFDC-curated Film Bazaar, the market section of the Goa International Film Festival of India in 2012-13. A project supported by several international co-producers, the film was first selected for the Cannes Critics Week, a parallel section of the French festival, and was picked up by Sony Pictures Classics for distribution in the US in early 2013.
In 2014, it became the first Indian film to be declared the highest grossing foreign language film of the year in the US, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. The film has grossed over $25 million worldwide and picked up several awards at film festivals.
