Vidya Balan’s short film Natkhat has officially entered the 2021 Academy Awards race in the Best Short Film Category. The actor posted a clip from the movie on Instagram along with a caption that says how “thrilled” she was about the film being chosen to compete for an Oscar.
Another post on the actor's Instagram is a poster of the film along with a caption that says the film is an entrant for the Oscars in 2021 after winning “prestigious international awards.”
Notable awards that the 33-minute short film has won include ‘Best Shortfilm’ at the Indian Film Festival in Stuttgart, winner of the International Kids Film Festival and Best of India Short Film Festival.
In the one-minute video that was shared on Instagram, the actor is seen talking to her son (Sanika Patel) who recounts an incident. He talks about how he and his friends took a fellow female classmate to the forest to ‘teach her a lesson’ because she slapped one of the boys for teasing her.
Watch the clip here:
Natkhat (transl. the brat) is directed by Shaan Vyas and written by Vyas and Annukampa Harsh. The movie is produced by Vidya Balan and Ronnie Screwvala and chronicles the story of a mother who teaches her young son about gender equality using bedtime stories. The short film first premiered on YouTube in June 2020 as a part of the We Are One Global Film Festival. The film has since then received critical acclaim and was the opening film of the Indian Film Festival of Melbourne that was hosted virtually between October 23 and 30, 2020.
In an interview with The Hindu in June 2020, Vidya Balan said that she liked the film and the role for being a part of the “ongoing conversation on how to bring up men so that they don’t treat women differently.” She adds, “In such a short duration, it [the film] becomes a personification of the conversation."