Bollywood saw a lot of ups and downs, commercially and otherwise, these past two years due to the coronavirus outbreak. A lot of filmmakers had to go the OTT way to showcase their movies. In what comes as great news for the industry, two such digitally-released films, Sherni and Udham Singh, starring Vidya Balan and Vicky Kaushal respectively, have been shortlisted for the 94th Academy Awards.

Speaking of Sherni, Balan played a forest officer on the lookout for a man-eating tigress. The film also features Sharat Saxena, Mukul Chadda, Vijay Raaz, Ila Arun and Brijendra Kala, and garnered a positive response upon release. The film, directed by Amit Masurkar, was released on Amazon Prime Video. This is Amit Masurkar`s second film that has become India’s official entry to the Oscars. His previous release `Newton`, starring Rajkummar Rao, was also selected in 2017.