National Award winning Tamil film Visaranai is India's official entry to Oscars 2017

Visaranai, a Tamil drama about the exploitation of prisoners and police corruption was picked as India’s official entry to the Oscars in the Best Foreign Language Film category for the 2017.

Ketan Mehta, the head of the Film Federation of India’s jury for the year, picked Vetrimaaran’s film from 29 films, reports Times of India .

Visaranai, which is based on M. Chandrakumar’s novel Lock Up about a autorickshaw driver, who shares his experience after he and three of his friends are arrested on false charges_;_ is director Vetrimaaran’s third film and is produced by Dhanush’s Wunderbar Productions.

The film has already has already won three National Awards this year — Best Feature Film in Tamil, Best Supporting Actor and Best Editing. It also won the  Amnesty International Italia Award 2015 and has been doing the rounds of festivals ever since.

Last year’s entry, a Marathi national award winning film, Court, failed to make the nominations list at the Oscars .

So far, nearly 60 countries have submitted their entries for the foreign-language Oscar before its 3 October 2016 deadline, reports Vareity. This includes Clash from Egypt which documents the story if a number of detainees from different political and social backgrounds thrown together in the violent aftermath of the Arab Spring.

There’s also Iceland’s  Sparrows , a coming-of-age film from director Runar Runarsson which follows a teenager trying to adjust to living with his father in a rough town in Iceland’s far north.

Will India make the cut for the nominations this year? The official nomination list for the category will be announced in January 2017. Here’s the trailer for Visaranai: