Gondhal, a Marathi Film Built on a Maharashtra Wedding Ritual, Was Chosen on 18 September 2026 as India's Entry for the 99th Academy Awards After Winning the Silver Peacock for Best Director at IFFI

The Film Federation of India announced in Mumbai on 18 September 2026 that Gondhal, a Marathi-language film written and directed by Santosh Davakhar, will be India’s official entry for the Best International Feature Film Oscar at the 99th Academy Awards. The PTI news agency reported that the selection committee’s chairperson said the film was picked from a list of 33. Gondhal comes to the Academy with a Silver Peacock for Best Director from the 56th International Film Festival of India (IFFI) and a prize from an international critics’ federation.

How the choice was made

The Academy lets each country or region send one film, picked by a selection committee the Academy has approved, and at least half of that committee must be film artists or craftspeople. The committee that picked Gondhal was chaired by the Kannada director P. Sheshadri, according to Hollywood Reporter India. Onmanorama reported that the committee watched all 33 submissions over ten days and that the final three were Gondhal, Angh and Ikkis.

The 33 films ran across several languages. Hollywood Reporter India counted 14 in Hindi and five in Marathi, with entries in Telugu, Tamil, Gujarati, Malayalam, Nepali and Konyak, and one silent film.

What the Academy asks of an entry

Rule Sixteen of the Academy’s rules for the 99th awards defines an international film as a feature of more than 40 minutes, made outside the United States and its territories, with a dialogue track that is mostly in a language other than English. Accurate English subtitles are required.

An official selection must have opened in its home country between 1 October 2025 and 30 September 2026 and run for at least seven consecutive days in a commercial cinema. WION and Hollywood Reporter India both give Gondhal’s release as November 2025. The Academy set 5 p.m. Pacific Time on 30 September 2026 as the deadline for submission materials, and the Academy’s 1 May 2026 announcement of its rules lists the same date.

A wedding-night ritual on the screen

A gondhal is a ritual performance from Maharashtra. The critic Rekha Deshpande, writing for FIPRESCI, describes it as an ancient ritual devoted to the goddess Durga Bhavani and the god Khandoba. Members of the gondhali community are invited to a wedding house, where all-night singing and dancing call on the deities to bless the couple. The film’s story is told through that ritual, which Deshpande says is also what sets the plot moving.

The Press Information Bureau (PIB), the government’s information agency, described the film in its 28 November 2025 release as set within the midnight carnival of Gondhal dance and music in rural Maharashtra. At the IFFI press conference on 27 November 2025, PIB’s account of the session says Davakhar regards the film as an act of cultural preservation. He recalled going to gondhal performances with his grandparents, and said: “I wanted to capture the original Gondhal for the future generations.”

The actor Kishor Kadam, who also took part in the press conference, said he grew up taking part in gondhal in his village. Davakhar added that telling the story over a single night kept the budget grounded, because the cast did not need changes of costume.

The prizes before the Oscars

Gondhal was one of 25 feature films in the Indian Panorama section of the 56th IFFI, which PIB announced on 8 November 2025. The section’s selectors picked those 25 from 516 Indian feature films, and the festival ran from 20 to 28 November 2025 in Panaji, Goa.

On 28 November 2025 the festival gave Davakhar the Silver Peacock for Best Director. PIB’s release says the award carries the Silver Peacock trophy, a certificate of merit and a cash prize of ₹15,00,000 (15 lakh rupees, or 1.5 million). Akashvani News carried the same result in its report on the closing ceremony. The jury’s citation, which PIB quoted, said: “Gondhal is like a Shakespearean fable set in a real world.” The jury chairperson was the filmmaker Rakesh Omprakash Mehra. The Chief Minister of Goa and the Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting presented the award.

FIPRESCI, the International Federation of Film Critics, gave Gondhal its award in the Indian cinema competition at the 17th Bengaluru International Film Festival, held from 29 January to 6 February 2026. FIPRESCI says its three-member jury, V. K. Joseph, Laurenţiu Brătan and Rekha Deshpande, chose the film unanimously.

Marathi cinema and India’s Oscar record

PTI reports that Gondhal is the fourth Marathi film India has submitted. The earlier three were Shwaas in 2005, Harishchandrachi Factory in 2009 and Court in 2015.

The same report counts three Indian films nominated in the category, which was once called Best Foreign Language Film: Mother India, Salaam Bombay and Lagaan. This site has covered two of them, Mehboob Khan’s Mother India and Ashutosh Gowariker’s Lagaan. No Indian entry has yet won the award. Gondhal is set in rural Maharashtra, the state profiled in Maharashtra at a glance.

What happens next

The Academy decides nominations in two rounds. In the first, members who opt in vote for up to 15 films, and the 15 with the most votes advance. In the second, members who have seen all 15 vote for up to five, and the top five become the nominees. If a film wins, the statuette goes to the film and the director accepts it on behalf of the creative team. Under the Academy’s rules the film itself, and not the country, is credited as the nominee.

Onmanorama reports that the Gondhal team has planned six months of promotional activity for its Oscar campaign. The 99th Academy Awards take place on Sunday, 14 March 2027.