Writing with Fire, the Indian documentary that won two awards at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival, has qualified for the 2022 Oscars in the Documentary Feature category, the Academy announced on Tuesday.
Written, directed, and produced by Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh, the film revolves around a team of reporters who launch India’s sole Dalit women-run newspaper in a media landscape dominated by men. Chief reporter Meera and her team break tradition to redefine what it means to be powerful, on the news frontlines and in their own homes.
Earlier this year, the film won the Audience Award and the Special Jury Award in the World Cinema Documentary category, at Sundance.
It has won multiple other awards, including the Silver Horn for Film on Social Issues at the Krakow Film Festival and the Special Jury Prize in the Documentary Competition category at the Seattle International Film Festival.
It is to be noted, however, that Writing with Fire is not India’s official entry in the category. Similar to Savita Singh’s Sonsi that qualified for the 2022 Oscars in the Live Action Short Film category, Writing with Fire has either won a major award at an Oscar-qualifying film festival, or met the criteria by being screened in select cinemas in the US.
It is among the 138 features that are eligible for consideration at the Oscars.
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Filmmaker Kiwi Chow’s documentary, Revolution of Our Times, that recently won the prize for the best documentary at the Golden Horse Awards in Taiwan, is also a contender alongside Writing with Fire. Chow’s documentary, which is about the 2019 anti-government protests in Hong Kong, was notably not screened locally in Hong Kong due to the film censorship laws that were passed in October.
The 94th Academy Awards is scheduled to take place on March 27, 2022 at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.