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Agence France-Presse

Despite Bollywood’s worldwide popularity, the mammoth Hindi-language film industry has made barely a dent in Hollywood’s Academy Awards, with just 10 Indian Oscar wins since 1957.
Kiran Rao is hoping to change that with Lost Ladies – India’s official entry for best international film in 2025 – which she said comes at a “special moment” for South Asian cinema centring women’s stories.
Only three Indian entries in the category have been nominated and none has won.
The last entry to be nominated was the 2001 film Lagaan. Rao was an assistant director on that epic, while the lead role was played by her ex-husband, Aamir Khan, who was a producer of Lost Ladies.


“We’ve seen a lot more participation from Asia at the Oscars,” Rao said in London recently, referring to triumphs for South Korea’s Parasite and Malaysian actress Michelle Yeoh’s best actress win for Everything Everywhere All at Once.
South Asian films, however, “haven’t seen as much in terms of representation at the Oscars”, she said. “There’s a lot that we can offer the world in terms of our stories, in terms of our styles.”

Available to stream on Netflix, Lost Ladies (Laapataa Ladies in Hindi) tells the story of two young women in rural India who get mistakenly swapped by their newly wed husbands while wearing similar face-covering veils.
Forging intimate connections and navigating conservative norms with humour, both women and the families they accidentally join question their convictions on marriage and womanhood.
The fresh take on the comedy-of-errors plot – a popular trope in Indian cinema – follows their journey “not just towards getting back home, but towards finding themselves and their purpose and their voice”, explained Rao.

While trying to drum up attention for the film among Academy members, Rao also wanted to use Lost Ladies for social outreach in the Indian countryside.
Since its release, she has been showing the film to “communities where women perhaps need new ideas and solutions and encouragement” and where “women would not perhaps otherwise be able to go to cinemas”.
“Storytelling, it can open that little window of perception, can change very old mindsets with sometimes just a small question or a small decision,” said Rao.
Rao said the film aims to address patriarchal issues “in a way that’s quite gentle and inclusive and doesn’t necessarily pass judgment on women’s decisions and the way they’ve chosen to live their lives – or have been forced to live their lives”.
While focusing on the challenges and pockets of hope for women in small-town India, the story “touches upon issues that affect women everywhere”, she said.
“Issues of agency, identity … women’s daily struggles and daily triumphs.”












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Some of these problems are reflected in her life as well, said Rao.
“Despite being halfway across the world, we still find women under-represented when it comes to most industries, especially when it comes to places where there’s decision-making involved,” she said.
Women directors have been rebuffed in the Oscars until recently. The awards have faced strong criticism in the past decade for a lack of diversity.

Only three women have won the best director category, and less than two per cent of all Oscar nominees have been women of colour, according to research by the University of Southern California’s Annenberg school for communication and journalism.
India’s Oscar entries for the foreign film category over the last seven decades have included less than a dozen films by women directors.
“I think women’s stories need to be seen more. Women directors need a lot more encouragement,” said Rao.


The selection of Lost Ladies followed another Indian movie – female director Payal Kapadia’s Malayalam-language All We Imagine as Light, about two nurses who forge an intergenerational friendship while working in Mumbai – winning the Grand Prix award at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival.
The UK entry for the Oscars foreign film category, Santosh, is a Hindi drama by British-Indian female director Sandhya Suri about a widow who takes on her late husband’s role as a police constable in rural north India.
“It’s great that in this Oscar race, Britain is represented by Sandhya Suri, again, a woman of South Asian origin. Payal Kapadia will be in the best film running after winning Cannes,” said Rao.
“It’s a special moment for women from India. Finally, our time has come, and I hope it’s the start of a wave of many more stories from India by women,” Rao said. “We’ve been quiet for far too long.”


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A still from Laapataa Ladies (Lost Ladies), directed by Kiran Rao, India’s entry for the 2025 best international film Oscar. With films by two other South Asian women filmmakers in the running, Rao says “our time has come”. 

Indian film producer, screenwriter, and director Kiran Rao says her movie Lost Ladies, India’s official entry for the Oscars international film category, has come at a “special moment” for South Asian cinema. Photo: AFP

A still from Lost Ladies, the film that will be India’s best foreign film Oscars entry in 2025. Photo: Instagram/@cosmicawes

A still from Indian film Lost Ladies. It tells the story of two young women in rural India who get mistakenly swapped by their newly wed husbands. Photo: Instagram/@cosmicawes

A still from Payal Kapadia’s film All We Imagine As Light. Photo: Instagram/@ercolichia

Shahana Goswami in a still from Santosh, a Hindi drama by British-Indian female director Sandhya Suri that is the UK’s best international film entry for the 2025 Academy Awards. Photo: Instagram/@tom_doniph0n

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Dayo Wong (left) and Michael Hui in a still from The Last Dance, one of 10 highlights from this year’s Hong Kong Asian Film Festival.

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Anita Mui and Stephen Chow in a still from comedy Justice, My Foot!. Mui’s remarkable versatility made her characters captivating to watch. Photo: Celestial Pictures Limited

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Director of wife-swapping comedy Laapataa Ladies (Lost Ladies), Indian Oscars entry, hails ‘special moment’ for South Asian women filmmakers


Director of wife-swapping comedy Laapataa Ladies (Lost Ladies), Indian Oscars entry, hails ‘special moment’ for South Asian women filmmakers.
