Kiran Rao’s Laapataa Ladies is India’s official entry for the 2025 Academy Awards for the Best International Feature Film category. The film will compete for the Best International Feature Film Oscar, a category which was previously called Best Foreign Film. Actress Nitanshi Goel, who famously starred as Phool in the film, shared a post with the film’s director Kiran Rao on Instagram. Taking a leaf from the film’s dialogue, the actress wrote in her caption, “Phool, English mein bataayein? Feeling very happy and grateful that Laapataa Ladies is India’s official entry for Oscars 2025! Kalaakand banaane ja rahi hun aap sab ke liye. Aapki Phool.”

After the accidental swap in Laapataa Ladies, Nitanshi’s character Phool starts working at a rail platform tea and snacks kiosk run by Manju Maai (Chhaya Kadam). Hesitant to work at first, Phool begins to experiment and her Kalakand recipe becomes an instant hit with the locals. During the process, she rediscovers herself. See Nitanshi Goel’s post here.

In an exclusive interview with NDTV’s Hardika Gupta, the actress said, “I’m just super happy now. The news has taken away all the illness and made me dance all over my room. It was a surprise for me. It was a beautiful surprise. I was like ‘oh my god, is this really happening?’ and then the messages started pouring in. The DMs started pouring in. And the moment I read it, I was like ‘omg, this is happening. Laapataa Ladies is trending all over.”

“Everybody is celebrating this. Itna pyaara moment lag raha hai. It’s like a surreal dream. Mumma and I read it together, and the moment we read it, we had our fingers crossed. We wished that our film would be selected for the Oscars and now that we see that it is really happening, we both shed some happy tears,” Nitanshi told NDTV.