Dhurandhar may have conquered the box office, dominated conversations and turned Ranveer Singh’s character into a pop-culture phenomenon—but when India had to choose one film for the 99th Academy Awards, the jury looked in a completely different direction.

Instead of the Aditya Dhar-directed action blockbuster, the Film Federation of India selected Santosh Davakhar’s Marathi thriller Gondhal as India’s official entry for the Best International Feature Film category at the 2027 Oscars. The decision has naturally raised the question: If Dhurandhar was such a massive success, why wasn’t it the obvious Oscar choice?

And the answer is more interesting than a simple “the jury didn’t like the film.”

The Oscar race was never just about box office

There were 33 films in contention for India’s official submission, spanning Hindi, Marathi, Telugu, Gujarati, Tamil, Malayalam and other languages. So, this wasn't exactly a one-film race where Dhurandhar simply lost to Gondhal at the finish line.

Dhurandhar entered the race with something most films could only dream of—enormous popularity and commercial success.

But the Oscars don't hand out tickets based on the size of a film's fan club.

The jury's job was to decide which film could best represent India on an international platform, particularly in the Best International Feature category. And that is where Dhurandhar appears to have hit a wall.

The jury member's blunt answer

Vivek Vaswani, one of the members of the 14-member selection jury, later offered perhaps the clearest explanation.

According to him, some members liked Dhurandhar, but the panel did not consider it “Oscar material.” More importantly, he said the film did not represent Indian culture in the manner the jury was looking for.

And then came the number that really put the decision into perspective:

Dhurandhar received just four votes from the 14-member jury.

That doesn't mean the jury dismissed the film's popularity or technical scale. It means the parameters for India's Oscar submission were different from the parameters that made Dhurandhar a blockbuster.

In other words, the box office was speaking one language; the Oscar jury was asking a different question.

Then came Gondhal—and suddenly the choice makes sense

Gondhal is almost the opposite kind of Oscar contender.

Written and directed by Santosh Davakhar, the Marathi thriller is rooted in rural Maharashtra and revolves around the traditional Gondhal ritual, using the cultural setting as the backdrop for a tense story involving relationships, ambition, hidden truths and human frailties.

That cultural specificity became one of the film's biggest strengths.

The film had also already travelled through the festival circuit. Davakhar won the Silver Peacock for Best Director at the 56th International Film Festival of India in 2025, adding festival credibility to the film's Oscar campaign.

So while Dhurandhar had the roar of a blockbuster behind it, Gondhal arrived with something the jury evidently valued highly—a very specific Indian cultural identity told through a contemporary cinematic story.

Regional cinema gets its big moment

There is another interesting layer to the decision.

With Gondhal, Marathi cinema gets India's official Oscar submission for the fourth time. Earlier Marathi films selected as India's official entries included Shwaas, Harishchandrachi Factory and Court.

That's significant because the Oscar conversation in India often gets dominated by Bollywood's biggest stars and the country's largest productions.

This time, the spotlight has moved somewhere much smaller—and perhaps that's exactly what makes the choice fascinating.

A film rooted in one state's folk tradition has been chosen to tell the world something about India.

And what happens to Dhurandhar now?

Here's the twist: Dhurandhar's Oscar story may not necessarily be completely over.

Not being India's official submission does not automatically mean a film has zero possibility of entering the Academy Awards independently. Films can potentially pursue the Academy's other qualifying routes, depending on the category and eligibility requirements.

That is broadly how RRR remained in the Oscar conversation despite not being India's official submission. The film eventually won the 2023 Oscar for Best Original Song for “Naatu Naatu.”

So, Dhurandhar hasn't necessarily had the cinematic equivalent of a door slammed in its face.

It simply didn't get the Indian team's ticket.

The bigger takeaway

Perhaps the most interesting part of this entire episode is that Dhurandhar losing the Oscar race does not make it a failure—and Gondhal winning does not make it a “better” film in every possible sense.

They were being judged for different things.

Dhurandhar demonstrated the power of scale, spectacle, star appeal and mass entertainment.

Gondhal appears to have offered the jury something else: a culturally rooted story with a distinct Indian identity and festival recognition.

And that's the strange beauty of cinema.

A film can make thousands of crores worth of noise and still not be the film a jury wants to send abroad.

Sometimes, the film that gets the loudest applause at home isn't the one chosen to introduce India to the world.