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Also showing: Loveleen Tandan

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Amrit Dhillon

As controversies swirl around Slumdog Millionaire - along with the eight Academy Awards it won on Sunday - the woman who cast the children and wrote the Hindi dialogue resolutely refuses to be drawn into anything that will diminish her euphoria at its success.

Calm and soft-spoken, Loveleen Tandan, 35, is unaccustomed to being in the limelight, having worked mainly as a casting director.

'I'm still dazed at the film's astonishing popularity around the world. It hasn't totally sunk in yet,' says Tandan (right, with Slumdog Millionaire star Freida Pinto).

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Originally brought in as Slumdog's casting director, the film's English director Danny Boyle later promoted her to co-director of the film owing to her contribution to the script. Tandan had insisted that about a third of the dialogue should be in Hindi for authenticity.

She says she was dismayed by the online campaign launched by American women's campaigner, Jan Lisa Huttner, for Tandan to have a joint best director nomination for the Oscars with Boyle.

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Huttner was hoping that Tandan would become the first non-white woman to win an Oscar for best director. (Boyle won the best director honour.)

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