Our Oscar obsession is unnecessary: Kabir Khan

Melbourne: Filmmaker Kabir Khan feels it’s high time that the Indian film industry stopped obsessing about the Oscars.

"I think we are unnecessarily obsessed by Oscars. Let’s not forget Oscars is an award ceremony for the US film industry which has one category amongst the various categories called best foreign film," Khan told PTI on the sidelines of three weeks long Indian Film Festival of Melbourne (IFFM) being held here. Khan said Oscars were not the ultimate criteria to validate a good film. "Americans view film from their perspective like all of us do and our perspective don`t necessarily need to match. I honestly do not believe in this Oscar hype. There are other international festival which have more international perspectives and viewpoint that we should be aiming at targeting into whether its Cannes or Venice," he said. "Those are the places where they celebrate film from all over the world and not only one single category like Oscars. Oscar race is something which is completely hyped," Khan said. Till now, only four Indians have held the golden statuette however, all for films directed by British filmmakers. Khan said though A R Rahman has won an Oscar for his music in `Slumdog Millionaire` it was not the best of his work. "They were part of an American film and the film that got released by a studio over there so that platform got recognised by the Americans," Khan said. Khan is now working on his next project with Saif Ali Khan in October this year which is loosely based on a book written by celebrated writer Hussain Zaidi. "The next film is a political thriller and currently we are working on who will be the lead actress," he said. Khan, who recently joined the elite 100 crore film club through his film `Ek Tha Tiger`, said though it was lovely to make it to that figure, there were other parameters to judge the success of a film. "`Ek Tha Tiger` was an expensive figure and it made its own profit which was great. But for a low budget movie it would be hard to touch that figure. As long as a movie churns its own profit for their own budget it should be fine," Khan said. PTI