“The Namesake”: A contender at this year's Oscars

Tabu in The Namesake

Acclaimed Indian American director Mira Nair's latest film The Namesake, which has earned a great commercial success and critical appreciation in India, the United States and several other countries, will be running for this year's Oscars.
Based on Jhumpa Lahiri's critically acclaimed novel about a Bengali immigrant family in the US, torn between modernity and tradition, the film, stars Irrfan Khan and Tabu in the lead roles. Tabu and Nair as well as the film's scriptwriter Sooni Taraporewala have left for Los Angeles for the mandatory promo of the film, produced by Fox Searchlight.
The Namesake also elicited a good response in Poland where people are used to watching films by greats like Andrzej Wajda, Roman Polanski and Krzysztof Zanussi.
In the overseas market, Nair's movie had made it to the North American Top 20 in only its second week and broke the 10-year opening week box office record at the Paris Theatre in New York City by grossing US $101,929 in its first seven days after it was released there in March.
In the film, national award winning actress Tabu plays the role of an ageing Bengali woman, a role which was offered first to Bollywood star Rani Mukherjee and then to Konkona Sen Sharma, both of whom turned it down.
Earlier, Mira Nair's Salam Bombay, a film about the street children in India's commercial capital, had made it to the Oscar nomination finals but failed to win the top honour by the Academy of Motion Pictures Science and Arts.