The Indian Oscar pick not many people know: What is Liar's Dice about?

Last year, when the Film Federation of India announced The Good Road as India’s entry for the Best Foreign Film award at the Oscars, a hullabaloo ensued with celebrities like Karan Johar and Anurag Kashyap howling about how the FFI was a useless, tasteless and pointless organisation.

A year later, will FFI become a hero for fans of Indian indies? Because today, the FFI announced that Liar’s Dice, directed by Geetu Mohandas, will be the Indian submission to next year’s Oscars.

The FFI is unlikely to face any brickbats for its decision this time round.

This is not just because Liar’s Dice is a good film, particularly when you keep in mind this is Mohandas’s first film. Since Liar’s Dice wasn’t backed by a Bollywood celebrity, it is one of the many, many films that the Indian film industry produces and of which Indian audiences know nothing.

Like pedigreed Indian indies, Liar’s Dice has been seen in film festivals such as faraway Sundance and won National Awards, but has not had a regular theatrical release across India. It was screened at last year’s Mumbai Film Festival and was very well-received.

Starring Geetanjali Thapa and Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Liar’s Dice is about a woman who sets out to find her missing husband. When there’s no news of her construction worker husband for five months, Kamala (Thapa) decides to head to Shimla and find out what’s happened. The village elders advise her against this journey, but Kamala won’t be swayed. She sets off with her little daughter (played by the utterly adorable child actor, Manya Gupta) and their goat, hoping to get news of Harud, her husband.

The roads of mountainous north are rife with danger. Soon after they’ve left, Kamala is attacked by two truck drivers, but violence is avoided when the mysterious Nawazuddin (Siddiqui) saves Kamala from the men. He looks like a homeless mad man and Kamala doesn’t trust him, but she quickly realises that without his help, she won’t be able to manage her little entourage.

As the quest continues from Shimla to Delhi and Kamala negotiates her way through other snares, we realise Nawazuddin is not a crazed madman, but an army deserter. He’s also not the saviour that romantics want him to be. He becomes Kamala’s guide not out of the goodness of his heart, but in exchange for her gold bangle. The title of the film refers to a game of dice that Nawazuddin plays in the city in order to fleece passers-by.

Thapa and Siddiqui deliver riveting performances that blind you to the weaknesses in the script and characterisation. Siddiqui is fantastic as the shifty Nawazuddin who is scheming at one moment, caring in the next and riddled with flaws. It’s to Siddiqui’s credit that he’s able to make this dark, fluid character feel credible and real. Thapa is luminous as Kamala. Of the two National Awards that were given to Liar’s Dice, one was to Thapa for her acting (the other went to Rajeev Ravi for his cinematography).

Liar’s Dice has a few flaws – it hurtles towards the end, for instance – but it’s a powerful, moving film. The story unsentimentally discusses serious issues like migration, the state of the urban poor and the terrible unfairness suffered by unskilled labour.

However, Mohandas’s script doesn’t ever slip into lecture mode and even when the script pushes credibility, the film’s tension slacken. Liar’s Dice leaves the audience with an open-ended conclusion that may feel dissatisfying to some and intriguing to others.

Whichever side you’re on, Kamala’s expressive face and Nawazuddin’s quicksilver tricks will linger in your memory along with images of the snow-covered village that Kamala leaves behind when she sets off on her quest.

Let’s hope being FFI’s chosen one will bring Liar’s Dice to a nearby cinema. Maybe the fact that Siddiqui was last seen opposite Salman Khan in Kick will work in Liar’s Dice’s favour. Perhaps some of the Bollywood celebrities who were moaning last year about how good film is being stifled in India, will root for Mohandas’s film and help it get a proper release.