KATHMANDU: Talakjung Vs Tulke has been selected as the Nepal’s  official entry to 88th Academy Awards’ Best Foreign Language Film category.

The Best Foreign Language Film Selection Committee (Nepal) has chosen this Nischal Basnet directorial venture among four movies submitted for the selection. Talakjung Vs Tulke tells the story of a man during the time of Maoist insurgency in Nepal.

The other movies included Sunpani, Bhimdatta and Nishani.

“It feels good to represent the country. I hadn’t thought the movie would be selected to represent Nepal,” Basnet shared. “I make my movie my way, others make movies their way. It is up to the panel of judges and how they see a movie — if it is good and competitive enough to represent Nepal as Oscars is about representing a country,” Basnet added.

The Academy Awards sets certain criteria for a movie to be eligible to participate in the Best Foreign Language Film category. “Talakjung Vs Tulke meets many criteria and was better than other movies submitted. It is a big thing for a film to meet criteria,” informed Laxminath Sharma, a member of the Committee.

As per him, one has to meet the criteria — original subject and story (of Nepal) along with good performance, technicalities, cinematography, lighting, editing, and background music among others.

The movie will now go through five stages of selection at the Oscars — if it manages to get through all these stages, only then it will be nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film category at the Academy Awards.

Every year, a Nepali movie is sent to Oscars to compete in this category, but Nepal hasn’t been able to achieve anything significant yet. But if Basnet’s movie succeeds to be nominated for the category, he feels, “it would be the biggest achievements for Nepalis here”. Nonetheless, it is completely fine with him even if the film is not selected as “there will be satisfaction that we reached to a certain level. We are critically acclaimed here and to be the country’s official submission to the Oscars is one more added thing for us. It feels good”.