Iqbal Hossain Chowdhury’s film “Boli” (The Wrestler), which won an award at the Busan Film Festival, has been selected to represent Bangladesh in the Best International Feature Film category at the 97th Academy Awards.
To supervise the nomination process, director Matin Rahman constituted a seven-member Oscar Bangladesh Committee. After accepting submissions, the committee carefully considered the options and, on October 1, decided unanimously to select “Boli” as Bangladesh’s official entry for the 97th Academy Awards.
Robin Shams, the coordinator of the Oscar Bangladesh Committee, confirmed the news.
The film has not been theatrically released in Bangladesh yet. However, under a newly added clause introduced by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the Oscars has updated the eligibility criteria for Best Picture and international submissions. Under the revised rules, films can now qualify for submission even if they haven’t had a theatrical release in the home country as long as they meet certain criteria, including international screenings.
The government of Bangladesh awarded a grant to “Boli” for the 2020–21 fiscal year. In the movie, Nasir Uddin Khan plays a peculiar fisherman who lives by the sea. In April and May of 2022, it was shot along Chattogram’s coast. Co-producers Syed Gausul Alam Shaon and Saiful Azim worked together.
Notably, “Boli” took home a prize of USD $30,000 (Tk 34 lakh) for the director after winning an award in the New Currents section of the 28th Busan International Film Festival in 2022. This is the first time a movie from Bangladesh has won the Busan Film Festival’s top prize. This beloved movie is now vying for an Oscar in the foreign feature film category.