Oscars 2022: Writing With Fire becomes India's first documentary to win the Best Documentary Feature nomination

Directed by Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh, the film was nominated for the best documentary feature today by Tracee Ellis Ross and Leslie Jordan

The nominations for Oscars 2022 were announced on February 8 by Tracee Ellis Ross and Leslie Jordan. Though the much-anticipated film Jai Bhim did not make it to the nominations for Best Picture, here's some piece of news that can cheer the Indian audience and film lovers. One of the documentaries from India, Writing with Fire has been nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the 94th Academy Awards. 

The film, directed by Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh, was nominated among four other movies that include Ascension, Attica, Flee and Summer of Soul (…or, When The Revolutions Could Not Be Televised). Writing with Fire is about journalists, who run a Dalit women-led newspaper Khabar Lahariya. They make a transition to digital journalism using smartphones from print, which has been running for 14 years. This is the first Indian feature documentary to be nominated for an Academy Award.

The film is produced under Ghosh and Thomas’ Black Ticket Films banner. The film has won 6 Audience Awards and 11 Best Documentary awards. It won two awards: The Audience Award and a Special Jury Award: Impact for Change in the World Cinema Documentary category at its world premiere at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. It was named a “Critics Pick" by The New York Times, where it was reviewed as “Rousing…nothing short of galvanizing". Jason Reizaian at The Washington Post also writes Writing with Fire as “The most inspiring journalism movie - maybe ever."