The year 2015 has started on a high note for Ritesh Batra’s internationally acclaimed and award winning film, The Lunchbox, which is nominated for the Film Not in the English Language category of the British Academy Film Awards 2015 on January 9.

Ecstatic about this new achievement Batra says, “It’s an honor to be nominated alongside the finest films of the year, much credit to my whole team and the work we did together. It’s a good validation to tell Indian stories to the world, if we don’t tell our own stories, no one else will.”

 

The nominations for the awards, organized annually by BAFTA, were announced in London on Friday. The Lunchbox, starring Irrfan Khan, Nawazuddin Siddiqui andNimrat Kaur,, is competing with Polish-Danish drama film ‘Ida’, Russian drama ‘Leviathan’, Brazilian-British adventure drama thriller film ‘Trash’, and Belgian drama ‘Two Days, One Night’, according to the official BAFTA website.

The charming story of the globally released, The Lunchbox, became the first Indian film to be declared the highest grossing foreign language film of 2014 in the US, Europe and Australia/New Zealand. The film has grossed upwards 25 million USD, 160 crores worldwide. It has clearly touched an emotional chord with filmgoers across the world.

Described as a defining film in the history of Indian cinema and the most successful international crossover, The Lunchbox has been showcased in various film festivals including The Cannes Film Festival, The Telluride Film Festival, The Toronto Film Festival and The London Film Festival etc. It has won various awards like Viewers Choice Award at the International Critics’ Week, Best Film at The London Film Festival and The Filmfare awards, to name a few. It recently won an award of Best First Feature in 2014 by Toronto Film Critics Association.