Karan Johar, Ram Charan, Jr NTR, Mani Ratnam, Siddharth Roy Kapur invited to join Film Academy, will be eligible to vote for Oscars

A majority of this year’s invitees hail from countries outside of the US, including RRR actors Ram Charan and NT Rama Rao Jr., Holy Spider star Zar Amir-Ebrahimi, Triangle of Sadness breakout Dolly De Leon, Shoplifters’ Sakura Ando, Phantom Thread star Vicky Kreips and Decision to Leave’s Park Hae-il. Other Hollywood actors on the list include Lashana Lynch, Nicholas Hoult, Bill Hader, Paul Reiser, Selma Blair and The Goonies actor Robert John Davi.

The academy has continued to make progress diversifying its ranks. Should all the invitees accept their invitations, the makeup of the Academy’s ranks will be 34% women, 18% from underrepresented ethnic or racial communities and 20% from non-US countries. Other Indian inductees included Mani Ratnam and Chaitanya Tamhane in the director’s branch, Karan Johar and Siddharth Roy Kapur in the producer’s branch, KK Senthil Kumar in the cinematographer’s branch, Sabu Cyril in the production design branch, and Shaunak Sen in the documentary branch.

Those invited to join the director’s branch include Joseph Kosinski (Top Gun: Maverick), Edward Berger (All Quiet on the Western Front), Santiago Mitre (Argentina, 1985), Michael Showalter (The Eyes of Tammy Faye) and Carlos López Estrada (Raya and the Last Dragon).

Among the executive branch invitees are Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav, Sundance Institute CEO Joana Vicente and SXSW director emeritus Janet Pierson.

In the music branch, in addition to Swift who recently penned a song for Where the Crawdads Sing, and Abel Makkonen Tesfaye (The Weeknd), other notables include David Byrne, RRR’s M.M. Keeravaani and Chandrabose, and Son Lux’s Ryan Lott and Ian Chang.

Some directors were invited to other branches. Marcel the Shell With Shoes On director Dean Fleischer-Camp scored an invitation to the animation and short film branch, while “Aftersun’s” Charlotte Wells’ invitation was for the writer’s branch, which Nobel Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro was also invited to.