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Vinta Nanda feels Anuja’s Oscar nod may be ‘biased’ and adds Priyanka Chopra and Guneet Monga are part of Oscars ‘flawed system’.
Guneet Monga and Priyanka Chopra serve as producer and executive producer on Anuja.
On Friday, television producer Vinta Nanda took to social media and called out the Oscars’ system of nominating films. Without name-dropping, she wrote, “Systems are so flawed now. Curators walk away with the Oscar nominations and awards as producers and the struggle of the artists and their producers is completely eclipsed. What kind of a world are we living in?” The post met with a lot of attention, including filmmaker-actor Ananth Mahadevan, who pointed fingers at ‘influential ones’ with ‘connections/networking’.
Through her post, Vinta took a jibe at Anuja, which secured a nomination for Best Live Action Short at the 97th Academy Awards. Speaking exclusively to News18 Showsha, Vinta says, “The producers of Anuja are featured nowhere near Guneet Monga (Kapoor) and Priyanka Chopra (Jonas). Theirs are the first two names featured in the list of producers. I’m sure Anuja is a brilliant film much like The Elephant Whisperers. But it’s becoming a norm year after year that after a film gets made, well-recognisable names with great network suddenly come and become producers.”
She further adds, “What they’re actually doing is curating and becoming part and parcel of the profits and business of the film. Technically, they aren’t the producers. They shouldn’t be going up on the stage and collecting those awards. People involved with marketing, taking the film from the producers – after it’s ready – to festivals and lobbying, get credit for the film, which they haven’t even partaken in. They should be making sure that the team that has actually produced the film takes the honour.”
However, she isn’t the one to be blaming Guneet or Priyanka. “No offense to them because they’re brilliant in their own right and have done stellar work in their lives. They’re part of a system that’s so flawed. Why should festivals be seeking their approval? They think the media won’t give them coverage if a Priyanka Chopra doesn’t come on top of the product? I’ve put my post questioning this. What’s happening in the bargain is that real writers, directors and producers don’t come in notice,” Vinta states.
She further points out that Anuja’s Oscars nod and Guneet’s induction into the Academy is a ‘conflict of interest’. She opines, “The Oscars share a symbiotic relationship with Guneet. She has done some great work and she has brought home the Oscars. Even for The Elephant Whisperers, she only came into it at the editing stage. She didn’t have anything to do with it till the first cut was already ready. She was able to bridge the gap between the filmmaker and the Oscars.”
Vinta continues, “What the Oscars organisers and Guneet need to introspect is, if this is a good thing that they’re doing. What if certain films don’t come to Guneet’s notice? A producer already making films may not be the right conduit because there may be biases there. I’m sure she or Priyanka isn’t biased and is very fair but it’s not the right way to go. As it is, the lesser names are where the material is because they’re the ones to be actually making a film.”
At the same time, Vinta reiterates how this process often ‘puts too much responsibility’ on people like Guneet and Priyanka. “Awards, festivals and funders need to find the right talent. There must be 20-30 other good films in the market, which they don’t even know exist. They can’t say that Guneet likes a film and so, I also like it. It’s an unhealthy kind of a space we’re getting into and it’s going to be a harmful and unhealthy ecosystem for creative storytellers to exist. The pressure is going to be so much. It’s so oppressive already,” she exclaims.
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