Ricky Kej Says Aamir Khan and Kiran Rao’s ‘Laapataa Ladies’ was “Absolutely The Wrong Choice To Represent India” At The Oscars

Kiran Rao’s ‘Laapaata Ladies’ which had been backed by Aamir Khan is officially out of the Oscars 2025 race. The film’s title had earlier been changed to ‘Lost Ladies’ so as to appeal more to the global audience and the makers were doing its promotions internationally too but even then the film failed to make the cut. ‘Laapaata Ladies’ starring Nitanshi Goel, Pratibha Ranta, Sparsh Shrivastava, Ravi Kishan and Chhaya Kadam among others was India’s official entry to the Oscars for the Best International Feature category. 

Grammy award-winning musician Ricky Kej took to his X account to talk about the film not making it to the Oscar final race. He wrote, “#LaapataaLadies is a very well made, entertaining movie (I enjoyed it), but was absolutely the wrong choice to represent India for the best #InternationalFeatureFilm category. As expected, it lost. When are we going to realize.. year after year.. we are choosing the wrong films. There are so many excellent movies made, and we should be winning the #InternationalFeatureFilm category every year!”

He further added, “Unfortunately we live in a “Mainstream Bollywood” bubble, where we cannot look beyond films that we ourselves find entertaining. Instead we should just look for good films made by film-makers who are uncompromising in their art.. low budget or big budget.. star or no star.. just great artistic cinema.”

Not just that he also criticised the posters of the film that had been circulating, he dissed the way they had been made and said that the Oscars committee probably rejected the film only by looking at posters. 

“Below is the poster of #LaapataaLadies, I am sure most academy voting members dismissed the film just by looking at these,” wrote Ricky.

While many agreed with Ricky on how the film was not worthy of being India’s official entry to the Oscars others criticised him for not being supportive enough. On the thread of the same tweet, the musician explained why he believed the film was not a good choice for the Oscars. 

He further wrote, “I re-iterate. Laapataa Ladies is a good film, well made, I myself found it engaging and entertaining.. handing subject matter well.. I even watched it a second time with friends. It is a film which fits well within the Indian mainstream.. and there is nothing wrong with that. But the treatment, style and presentation was not something that could ever win the “International Feature Film Category” at the Oscars. The poster itself, with the retro-collage look, the doodles, and the comic fonts does not show depth, that is usually preferred in this category.”

Kiran Rao’s film was chosen among 29 films to represent India at the Oscars, including ‘Animal’ and ‘All We Imagine As Light’ which has been ruling the International film festivals and also won at Cannes. Payal Kapadia’s ‘All We Imagine As Light’ is the flavour of the season and the Indian audience too has whole-heartedly accepted the film. Many fans on social media wrote that ideally, it should have been Kapadia’s film that should have been India’s official entry to the Oscars.