The movie is among ten films that have made it to this category for the 91st Academy Awards. A total of 104 films had originally qualified in the category. Village Rockstars, which is India’s entry for the Foreign Language Film Category, did not make it to the race.
Period. End of Sentence is a documentary film about women in India fighting against the stigma of menstruation. It also highlights the role of real-life ‘Pad Man’ Arunachalam Muruganantham, a Coimbatore-based low-cost sanitary napkin inventor. It is directed by award-winning Iranian-American filmmaker Rayka Zehtabchi and the film is executive produced by Guneet Monga and co-produced by Monga’s Sikhya Entertainment, which did The Lunchbox and Masaan.
After the Oscar shortlist was announced in Los Angeles on Monday, Monga posted on Instagram: “Waking up to this shortlist! So proud and so exciting… I am so humbled to be a part of the producing team.”
The movie follows girls and women in Hapur, North India and has a duration of 26-minutes. It documents their experience with the installation of a pad machine in their village. It also shows Muruganantham’s invention of the easy-to-operate machine that makes low-cost sanitary napkins using supplies that are readily available in India.
Remember Muruganantham’s story was the inspiration for Bollywood film Pad Man, that has Akshay Kumar and Sonam Kapoor play the lead roles. It talks about how menstruation is still looked as a social taboo and how his machines that helping train women to operate them and in turn sell the supplies at very affordable prices to other women in their area.
Nominations for the 91st Oscars will be announced on 22 January 2019, over a month ahead of the Oscars ceremony, which is slated to be held on 24 February 2019.
