Toronto-based filmmaker Nisha Pahuja’s To Kill a Tiger is among the five films nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the 96th Academy Awards.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced the 2024 Oscar nominees this morning (Jan. 23), with Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer leading the pack with 13 nods.

To Kill a Tiger is a story of a family from a small Indian village seeking justice against all odds – led by the father, Ranjit – after their 13-year-old daughter is sexually assaulted by three men. The doc is a coproduction between Pahuja’s Notice Pictures and the National Film Board of Canada (NFB), and produced by Pahuja alongside Cornelia Principe and the NFB’s David Oppenheim.

Speaking to Playback Daily after the nomination announcement, Pahuja says that despite the robust amount of support available in Canada to fund documentaries, funding distribution was an uphill battle. “The issue isn’t necessarily getting your film made, it’s getting your film seen,” she says, adding that getting to this point has required working “independently outside of any kind of ecosystem,” with the support of executive producers.

To Kill a Tiger has a deep well of support internationally, with actors Dev Patel and Mindy Kaling, filmmakers Deepa Mehta and Jason Loftus, and poet Rupi Kaur among the several executive producers credited to the film.

Pahuja says she believes it was the strength of the real-life story that ultimately swayed Academy voters.

“It’s a really powerful story about something that’s really horrific, but rooted in love and humanity, and a search for justice,” she says. “It’s based specifically in India but I think it’s really a universal story about resilience and what we do for those that we love… that’s what appealed to people. They could see beyond the specificity of it and see what was universal about it.”

Pahuja also credits the film’s editing, score, and cinematography for its success. “There’s such a level of care and craft that went into the film,” she says. “We took eight years to make it.”

Nominated in the Live Action Short Film category is Invincible, written and directed by Montreal’s Vincent René-Lortie, and produced by Samuel Caron and Élise Lardinois of Telescope Films. The short is distributed by h264 and is inspired by a true story of a 14-year-old boy who died while escaping a youth centre.

There are a number of other Canadians vying for Oscar gold. South Korean-Canadian playwright and filmmaker Celine Song is nominated for Best Original Screenplay for Past Lives, which she also directed. The film earned two nominations, including Best Picture.

The late Canadian music icon Robbie Robertson received a posthumous nomination for Best Original Score on Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon; London, Ont.-born actor Ryan Gosling is up for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Barbie; and Nova Scotia’s Ben Proudfoot has received his third nomination in the documentary short film category for The Last Repair Shop.

The 96th Academy Awards will take place in Hollywood on March 10.

Image courtesy of the NFB