Rima Das' Village Rockstars out of the Oscars race

India's Oscar nomination, Village Rockstars, the Assamese film, which bagged the National Award for the Best Feature film, is now out of the race for bagging the Best Foreign Language Film prize at the 91st Academy Awards. 

The Rima Das directorial, set in the director's hometown of Chhaygaon, is a coming-of-age film about young Assamese kids growing up among natural calamities, yet with a determined aspiration to own a guitar and form a rock band. 

Bhanita Das, the lead of the film, also won the National Award for Best Child Actor. Apart from Village Rockstars, even Iram Haq's Norwegian-Urdu film, What Will People Say, starring Indian actors including Adil Hussain, also failed to make the nine-film shortlist, which now features critically acclaimed Japanese film Shoplifters and Alfonso Cuaron's Mexican film Roma. 

Meanwhile, Rima's next film Bulbul Can Sing, which had its international premiere at the Toronto Film Festival, is once again a coming-of-age film, set near Chhaygaon.