Despite hopes, 'Jai Bhim' fails to bag Oscars 2022 nod
Ahead of the Academy Awards 2022 on March 27, the official nominations were announced on Tuesday. Belfast, Coda, Don't Look Up, Drive My Car, Dune, King Richard, Licorice Pizza, Nightmare Alley, The Power of the Dog, and West Side Story were the Best Picture nominees. Sadly, Jai Bhim couldn't make the cut, but the Indian documentary Writing with Fire made it to the nominations.
Javier Bardem (Being the Ricardos), Benedict Cumberbatch (The Power of the Dog), Andrew Garfield (Tick, Tick...Boom!), Will Smith (King Richard), and Denzel Washington (The Tragedy of Macbeth) are the Best Actor nominees. The Best Actress nominations went to Nicole Kidman (Being the Ricardos), Penelope Cruz (Parallel Mothers), Kristen Stewart (Spencer), Jessica Chastain (The Eyes of Tammy Faye), and Olivia Colman (The Lost Daughter).
For actresses in a supporting role, Jessie Buckley (The Lost Daughter), Ariana DeBose (West Side Story), Judi Dench (Belfast), Kirsten Dunst (The Power of the Dog), and Aunjanue Ellis (King Richard) were shortlisted. Ciarán Hinds (Belfast), Troy Kotsur (Coda), Jesse Plemons (The Power of the Dog), JK Simmons (Being the Ricardos), Kodi Smit-McPhee (The Power of the Dog) were the Supporting Actor nominees.
Meet your 2022 #OscarNoms hosts: @TraceeEllisRoss and @thelesliejordan. Join us on Tuesday, February 8th at 5:18am PT to see who is headed to the 94th #Oscars: https://t.co/Zh1c00Anje pic.twitter.com/5QM3sw0LYJ
— The Academy (@TheAcademy) February 3, 2022
Earlier on Tuesday, a tweet by podcaster Jacqueline Coley sparked the expectation of Suriya's Jai Bhim scoring a nod in the most coveted Best Picture category. Replying to a journalist's tweet about Oscars predictions, Coley had placed her bets on the Tha Se Gnanavel-directorial. "#JaiBhim for Best Picture. Trust me on this one," she had written. The tweet had gone viral.
Coley is the Awards Editor at review-aggregation website, Rotten Tomatoes. Hence, her tweet sparked speculation of a possible nomination for Jai Bhim. However, Coley had to later clarify that she had "no inside information" about the nominations. Notably, some scenes from the Tamil film had been included in an official video by the Academy before.
Although India sends its official entries in the Best Foreign Language Film segment nearly every year, only three Indian movies have been nominated to date—Mehboob Khan's Mother India (1957), Mira Nair's Salaam Bombay! (1988) followed by Aamir Khan-led musical sports film Lagaan (2001).
