Despite being one of the biggest film industries in the world in terms of quantity, India’s performance at the Oscars has been disappointing to say the least. We’ve had our chances – Indian films like Mother India, Salaam Bombay and Lagaan have been nominated, but the golden statuette has eluded the country on all three occasions.

Probably, the highest moment came when Slumdog Millionaire, a film based on an Indian chaiwallah’s search for love bagged eight Oscars with AR Rahman and Resul Pookutty (both of whom have worked for Indian films) among the winners. Some accused the film of selling poverty porn, but truth is that poverty is very much a part of India. As Indians, we should be proud of the film’s achievements considering the number of Indians (Anil Kapoor, Irrfan Khan and Saurabh Shukla among others) involved with the film.

In this year’s edition, we have once again failed to be nominated for the Best Foreign Language film category. So, the only film we should root for is Lion. A film that stars Indian actors like Sunny Pawar, Deepti Naval, Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Tannishtha Chatterjee among others.

The story also revolves around India, and is about a boy who gets lost in Calcutta but gets rescued when an Australian couple decides to adopt him. However, once he grows older, the boy wants to trace his origins back to India and uses all means to reunite with his original family. In addition, to the Indian locations, the film has Hindi and Bengali dialogues which should gladden many Indian hearts.

So what if it’s not a film made by an Indian, it has India at its core. Surely, reason enough for the entire country to back it. The have been nominated for five awards including Best Film and Dev Patel earns a nomination for Best Actor in a supporting role and Nicole Kidman makes the cut for Best Actress in a supporting role.

We hope it bags at least three awards from the five possible, and gives us Indians some reasons to rejoice post Oscars.