'The Academy is wrong' The Warrior producer ridicules Academy members for disqualifying his film as the British entry for Oscars

Shyam Bhatia in London

Film producer Bertrand Faivre has ridiculed The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for disqualifying his film, The Warrior, as the British entry for the Foreign Language Oscar, saying Academy members "have a very narrow idea of what constitutes a British movie."

The Warrior, directed by British Gujarati filmmaker Asif Kapadia, was adapted from a Japanese folk tale and tells the story of one man's spiritual journey from the deserts of Rajasthan to the snow-capped Himalayan mountains. It was selected by BAFTA, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, as the British entry for the Oscars, but fell at the final hurdle when the Motion Picture Academy decided that the Indian background and six minutes of Hindi dialogue disqualified the film from representing the UK.

The Academy's decision announced through a press release on Monday, December 4, shocked the cast and crew involved in making the film. Kapadia was too upset to comment, but producer Faivre told rediff.com in an exclusive interview from his home in France, "I am appalled and I think they (the Academy) are wrong.

"The Academy has a very narrow idea of what constitutes a British movie. They didn't think it was an English movie, so what can we say?" continues Faivre. "It's not an Indian movie; it is by a second generation director brought up in London. But he has also been surrounded by Indian culture. I think they (the Academy) thought it doesn't look traditional English, so it's not English.

"They don't have a good idea of how the film was made, how it started, the people involved or who Asif Kapadia is. For them, this film belongs to no category, although the director is English, most of the actors are English, the financing is English, the scriptwriters are English," he adds.

Faivre reveals that BAFTA had protested against the Academy's decision, but adds that The Warrior's cast and crew were keeping silent, at least in public. As for the director, Faivre says, Asif is working on his next project, and "he doesn't think there is any point in arguing."

One bittersweet consolation for Faivre is that until ten days ago, The Warrior was unofficially shortlisted as the film 'most likely to win an Oscar'. He says the one silver lining to his cloud of disappointment is that a clearly rattled Motion Picture Academy has told BAFTA that a Hindi dialogue film will, in the future, be perfectly acceptable as a British movie, "provided it is more linked to Britain."