Marathi film Gondhal is India's official entry for the 2027 Oscars

The Film Federation of India named the Marathi film Gondhal as India's official submission for Best International Feature at the 99th Academy Awards. Jury chair P. Seshadri announced the choice at a press conference in Mumbai on Friday, 18 September. The panel watched 33 films over ten days. Four of them were in Marathi. Fourteen were in Hindi. The rest came in Telugu, Gujarati, Tamil, Malayalam and Nagamese, plus one silent film.

Seshadri said Angh and Ikkis sat with Gondhal in the final three. He called the selection a happy moment for Marathi cinema and for Indian cinema at large. Other titles in the wider field included Dhurandhar, Hanuman Ansh, Main Vaapas Aaunga and Border 2. The Academy will publish a 15-film shortlist on 15 December. Nominations follow on 21 January 2027. The ceremony is scheduled for 14 March 2027 at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood.

What the film is

Santosh Davakhar wrote and directed Gondhal. It is his first feature. The story runs through a single night in rural Maharashtra during a Gondhal, the all-night ritual of drums, song and dance offered to regional deities. At the centre is Suman, a woman in a harsh marriage, who plans a murder and an escape with a lover the village is not supposed to know. The ritual is not decoration. It is the clock and the cover for the plot.

Kishor Kadam, Ishita Deshmukh, Yogesh Sohoni, Nishad Bhoir and Anuj Prabhu lead the cast. Ilaiyaraaja wrote the score. Amalendu Chaudhary shot the film. Ashish Mhatre cut it. The running time is about two hours. It opened in Maharashtra theatres on 14 November 2025 to a modest box office and a longer festival life.

Gondhal had its world premiere in the Indian Panorama at the 56th International Film Festival of India in Goa in 2025. Davakhar won the Silver Peacock for Best Director there. The film later took the FIPRESCI prize at the Bengaluru International Film Festival and further honours at the Pune International Film Festival and the Third Eye Asian International Film Festival.

The line of Marathi submissions

Gondhal is the fourth Marathi film India has sent to the Academy. Shwaas went in 2005, Harishchandrachi Factory in 2009 and Court in 2015. Last year the federation sent Neeraj Ghaywan's Homebound, which did not reach the final five. The pattern is consistent. When the jury wants a film that can travel, it often reaches past the large Hindi productions toward a regional work with a tight frame and a specific social world.

That choice has a cost at home. Several of the Hindi titles in this year's pile had bigger marketing machines and louder public campaigns. The federation's job is not to reward opening-weekend numbers. It is to pick one film that can survive a room of Academy members who will watch it with subtitles and without the domestic context. A night ritual in western India, a woman planning violence, and a score by Ilaiyaraaja give those members something they can hold.

Davakhar comes to the selection as a social activist who made a first film rather than as a studio regular. That fact will be used in the campaign. It should not hide the harder work ahead. India has to qualify the film with the Academy, mount screenings in Los Angeles and New York, and keep the title in front of branch members through December. Homebound showed that festival medals do not by themselves buy a nomination. Gondhal now has four months to prove it can do what the last official entry could not.