It may be a short film, but Gregg Helvey is hoping to go a long way for Indian cinema – and Indian development – with his social commentary film Kavi earning a nod at the 82nd annual Academy Awards next month.

A movie about a young boy wishing to play cricket and go to school but is instead forced into child labor at a brick kiln, Kavi is officially nominated in the Short Film (Live Action) category, according to the list of final nominations released by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences on February 2nd.

Meanwhile, the Marathi film Harishchandrachi Factory did not make the final cut in the Best Foreign Film category, the Academy revealed on Tuesday.

Produced by Guneet Monga, Harish Amin and Helvey, Kavi was reportedly shot just outside the Mumbai district of Wai on a shoestring budget of about $30,000 and was filmed in eight days.

“We are extremely happy and would like to thank each and every person who has put his or her efforts into this project,” Monga told the Indo-American News Service on Tuesday, just after the nomination was announced. “We had celebrated when we won the Student Oscar for Kavi, and that is just what we are planning right now.”

The Oscar nod caps a string of honors, awards and recognitions for the film since it began screening at film festivals last year. In addition to nabbing a Student Academy Award for Best Short Narrative, Kavi was named the Best Film at five film festivals in 2009, according to the film’s website.

It also earned an Audience Award at the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles and the South Asian International Film Fest, among other similar honors, the film’s production team announced.

That production team included Helvey, a film student at the University of Southern California when he arrived with limited finances in India to fund his project.

However, Kavi raised enough money to be produced as a short, and Helvey had announced at IFFLA he was hoping the film festival circuit would help him raise even more funds to make the film a full-length feature.

Kavi will be competing against four other films for the Oscar statuette, including The Door (Juanita Wilson and James Flynn), Instead of Abracadabra (Patrik Eklund and Mathias Fjellström), Miracle Fish (Luke Doolan and Drew Bailey), and The New Tenants (Joachim Back and Tivi Magnusson).

Unfortunately, the news was not so exciting for Indian director Paresh Mokashi, whose Harishchandrachi Factory representing India’s hat in the ring for Best Foreign Film did not make the final cut for next month’s Oscar event.

The film, shot entirely in Marathi, told the true story of Dadasaheb Phalke, who was credited as making India’s first-ever feature film in 1913.

Mokashi did not seem disappointed with the news when he talked to reporters in India shortly after the nominations were announced.

“My film is still a good film, but everyone has different likes and dislikes. Our tastes and the Academy’s tastes don’t match, that’s all,” Mokashi told reporters, “All day, people have been calling me to offer condolences as if someone has died. There is no disappointment in me at all.”

The five films officially nominated for Best Foreign Film, as announced by the Academy, were Ajami (Israel), El Secreto de Sus Ojos (Argentina), The Milk of Sorrow (Peru), Un Prophète (France) and The White Ribbon (Germany).

India’s last official nomination at the Academy Awards was in 2002, when Aamir Khan’s Lagaan earned a nod but did not claim the top prize. Other Indian films nominated for an Oscar included Mother India and Salaam Bombay.

Harishchandrachi Factory was the first-ever Marathi film up for an Academy Award; it opened in theaters across India on January 29th.

This year’s Academy Awards will be held at Hollywood’s Kodak Theater on March 7th.