After years of corruption and highly questionable results, it's time to talk about The Filmfare Awards.
Often referred to as "The Indian Oscars" the Filmfare Awards are in some ways the biggest awards of the Hindi Film industry (which excludes regional Indian cinema). Whether this started as a self-declaration or people think they're the "best" awards may be discussed, but they are definitely the most-discussed Hindi film awards. Comparing them to the Oscars is a big fault in my opinion though, because although The Academy sometimes nominates and honours doubtful movies, The Filmfare Awards are the opposite: they only sometimes nominate high quality movies. Mainly, they just pick the most successful movies of the previous year, which may be anywhere between strawberry (Rang De Basanti) and lime (Raja Hindustani) explosions .
Especially small and independent movies are rarely (read: never) nominated, and every year rumours about corruption turn up - for example actor Abhay Deol stated he got a call saying that if he'd dance at the ceremony, he'd finally win an award. Most "serious" (don't take the term too seriously) directors, producers and actors have thus distanced themselves from the Filmfare Awards for good reason. I mean, they're given by a movie magazine! (The Filmfare magazine, in case anybody wondered).
The request of the Best Film winning movie becoming the Oscar submission has happily not been conceded yet - although sadly, this year's Barfi! did both win the Filmfare Award and the Oscar submission. Highly undeservedly.
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