List of submissions to the 90th Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film (coming soon)

anonymous1980
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Re: List of submissions to the 90th Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film (coming soon)

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BPM (Beats Per Minute) , France (Robin Campillo) 7.5/10 - This drama chronicles the members of the French chapter of ACT UP, an AIDS advocacy group who stage pretty aggressive and radical protests against both government and pharmaceutical corporations during what I think is the early 1990's or late 1980's. This film is pretty compelling and excellently acted. It has a big heart and it wears it on its sleeve. There was a lot of love and passion about the subject matter. There's no denying its importance and significance. Although it does get a bit repetitive, more than a bit preachy and on the nose at times. It's a solid effort but I wasn't completely bowled over by it like some people have.

Will it get in? Possible. Like Tom of Finland, it's pretty gay but there's enough Important Subject Matter to overcome that. Will probably make the 9 but is not a lock.
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Re: List of submissions to the 90th Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film (coming soon)

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First They Killed My Father, Cambodia (Angelina Jolie) 7.5/10 - This is a film which chronicles one little girl's experience during the rise of Khmer Rouge in Cambodia based on the memoirs of Loung Ung. This is obviously a passion project from director Angelina Jolie. It's a very well-made film. It's obviously from the heart. It's filled with good intentions. I can't really fault it that way. But the film didn't really depict anything I didn't already know, having already been to Cambodia and having known about its dark period with the Khmer Rouge and along with seeing other films about the subject matter. That said, it's a commendable piece of work and Jolie definitely has the directorial chops. The last twenty minutes were especially strong.

Will it get in? Its Hollywood pedigree will help it get into the Top 9 finals but it's not a lock for the Top 5.
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Re: List of submissions to the 90th Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film (coming soon)

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The Square, Sweden (Ruben Ostlund) 9/10 - A museum curator is trying to promote the latest modern art exhibition in his museum and along the way, he encounters a series of strange mishaps. I'm a huge fan of Ruben Ostlund's previous film, Force Majeure (robbed of an Oscar nomination, IMO) so I was looking forward to this Palme D'Or winner. It's not quite as good but it's still pretty darn great. Don't let the art museum milieu trick you into thinking this is some sort of high-brow art film. It's pretty darn funny and it really gets the audience into that world even if you don't know a thing about modern art. One can still appreciate its satirical bent and dark humor. Even at two and a half hours, the time seemed to have flown by. Highly recommended.

Will it get in? Possible, especially if there are enough people who feel bad about the Force Majeure snub. But this one needs the committee help. It's a bit further outside their wheelhouse than the previous film.

Loveless, Russia (Andrei Zvyagintsev) 9/10- This is the latest film from a director I like whose name I can't spell without copy-pasting from IMDb/Wikipedia. After he hears that his parents are divorcing and think he's a burden, a 12-year-old boy runs away and disappears. His parents look for him but confront the truth that they may think they're better off without him. Trust Russia to make a film about an unspoken issue for some people that may open deep wounds in the human psyche. This is a rather difficult film. Some people may be turned off by it especially if they're parents. But one can appreciate its audacity to bring it up. That's on one level. One could also read this as a rather subtle jab at Putin's Russia. Either way, this is a film that will get people talking one way or another. Features some fantastic performances too.

Will it get in? Leviathan got in so it's certainly possible.
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Re: List of submissions to the 90th Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film (coming soon)

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I hope you guys don't mind but I decided I'm gonna post my reviews on the Foreign Language Film entries I've seen since quite a few are going to be screened here in the next couple months. Here are the first two:

Birdshot, The Philippines (Mikhail Red) 7.5/10 - A bus headed to Manila and its passengers mysteriously disappear while a young girl raised in a very rural life by her single father inadvertently kills a critically endangered Philippine eagle in a wildlife sanctuary. A couple of police officers investigate both. There seems to be two very good films mashed together here. A novice police officer fighting the system to investigate a conspiracy/mystery and a coming-of-age of a naive young girl. I have trouble trying to correlate one with the other on both a narrative and a thematic level even though they are connected. I can see what they were going for but I didn't think it completely worked. Mikhail Red, however, is one of Philippine cinemas most exciting young voices. He still crafted a beautiful, suspenseful film that deserves to be seen.

Will it get in? We don't have the $$$ for a campaign and this one isn't likely to inspire enough enthusiastic votes. So as it pains me to say it, no.

Tom of Finland, Finland (Dome Karukoski) 7/10 - This is the biopic of the Finnish gay artist whose art works depicting masculinized homoerotic images which inspired a gay subculture and is Finland's entry to the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar this year. I think I may have vaguely heard of the name but I knew next to nothing of this artist and the film did a pretty good job at not making this at all into a stuffy biopic (it's impossible anyway, it is about gay erotica). It doesn't exactly rise above being a really good biopic but it did hold my attention. It's a fascinating chapter in LGBT history. I'm a bit surprised when I looked up that the director is actually straight (or at least married to a woman) since this is like one of the gayest films I've ever seen (not meant to be an insult).

Will it get in? The biopic angle and the Important Issues angle will certainly help it. But the gay content will repel some of the more conservative, white straight males. This will need the committee help and getting into the Final Five is tricky.
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Re: List of submissions to the 90th Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film (coming soon)

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I've been meaning to add in that I saw Newton, India's submission, this summer at the Traverse City Film Festival. It is a delightful black comedy, with enough sympathy and charm (it is never as dark as it feels like it could be) that would make this seem like a possible contender. It should play to the older crowd very well while also having enough bite to excite the younger crowd too. I could also see it being too small a film to gain any real traction. Either scenario wouldn't surprise me.

That said, I see that it is no mired in a stupid controversy that it is too similar to an Iranian film from 2001 called Secret Ballot (which I've never seen). Even that film's director has called bullshit on the claim, but I don't know if that will be enough.
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Re: List of submissions to the 90th Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film (coming soon)

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Mister Tee wrote:
bizarre wrote:One thing to take into account, though it might seem silly now - as the liberal establishment is wrapped up in a McCarthyite frenzy, the very centre-blue Hollywood set may have some kneejerk reactions to the idea of awarding anything coming out of Russia.
McCarthyite frenzy? McCarty had pretend lists of imagined traitors. What we're dealing with now is potential collusion between Russia and a U.S. presidential candidate, whose very election may have been enabled by illegal interference. One of these is not like the other.
You're correct, but that hasn't stopped a huge bloc of liberal pundits and their followers from whipping themselves into a conspiratorial, Russophobic frenzy far exceeding that which merits actual concern and scrutiny. See: Louise Mensch, Eric Garland, Seth Abramson et al
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Re: List of submissions to the 90th Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film (coming soon)

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I've seen another three of the submitted films.

By the Time It Gets Dark from Thailand has no chance. This has been compared to the work of Apichatpong Weerasethakul but I found to be worlds away from Weerasthakul who's films tend to cast a hypnotic spell on one. One of Anocha Suwichakornpong earlier film's Mundane History had more of a passing nod to Weerasethakul, this though is more fragmented with some beautiful moments but overall unfulfilling.

Félicité from Senegal could prove to be something of a dark-house. It's grounded by an engaging and very earthy performance from Vero Tshanda Beya Mputu and a constant feast for the eyes. Having seen very few films from Africa, much less Senegal, it was a fascinating look at a society I know nothing about. The dramatic arc of the film works well but at 129 minutes I felt it was overlong and could have done with some editing.

America Square from Greece is another film that could prove to be a dark horse in the competition. It deals with the hot button issues of racism and asylum seekers. It starts off well but at about the one hour mark starts spiralling into frankly sill situations that didn't ring true. It is a very well meaning film and it is full of irony. Makis Papadimitriou has appeared in a number of films in the last couple of years of some note and he delivers another effective performance in this.
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Re: List of submissions to the 90th Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film (coming soon)

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FINAL LIST OF SUBMISSIONS ANNOUNCED:

Poor Ghana & the UAE, so excited to submit for the first time, decided to hold off. Bhutan, Macedonia and Montenegro also declined to submit. But here is the record(!) of 92 submitting countries. Another record is that 26 of these films are directed or co-directed by women.

Something interesting is to see Syria submit this year, for a film about the death of an opposition protestor, no less. I've been researching Syrian film in depth this year and while subversive voices are allowed to work 'for committee appearances', their films are rarely shown much less overseas, and they are always at risk of unemployment, detention, torture or death (most of their industry's luminaries, some of whom I've talked to, are in exile if they are still alive). So this is a shocking surprise.

This is an old, pre-2011 article, but a fantastic read and primer to the major canon of Syrian cinema, framed as an interview with (imo) the greatest Syrian filmmaker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006 ... ed-on-film
I HIGHLY recommend his film Stars in Broad Daylight, which can be seen with subtitles on YouTube if I'm not mistaken - it's a near-masterpiece - as well as the films of Mohammad Malas, Nabil Maleh, Abdellatif Abdelhamid and the documentaries of Omar Amiralay, as well as the classic 70s coproduction The Dupes from Egyptian director Tewfik Saleh, which is an adaptation of famous Palestinian novel Men in the Sun
bizarre wrote:Here is the final list of submissions:

Afghanistan - "A Letter to the President" (Roya Sadat) - A female government official is imprisoned when she defends a woman from punishment by village lords, and writes the president for help. Surprising choice over another female filmmaker from the country (Shahrbanoo Sadat with 'Wolf and Sheep')
Albania - "Daybreak" (Gentian Koçi) - A young mother living in poverty takes on a caregiver role for a very old, ill woman, and finds that her own survival depends on that of her ward's
Algeria - "Road to Istanbul" (Rachid Bouchareb) - A woman sets off to find her daughter, who joined ISIS in Syria. Algeria had announced that it may not be able to submit this year, so this is an 11th-hour decision
Argentina - "Zama" (Lucrecia Martel) - Set in pre-independence Argentina in the 18th century, a Spanish Crown officer embarks on a dangerous mission to track down a bandit in the wilderness
Armenia - "Yeva" (Anahit Abad) - A young woman flees to a village in disguise with her daughter to escape her tyrannical in-laws after her husband's death
Australia - "The Space Between" (Ruth Borgobello) - An Italian-language family drama about a successful chef who travels to Northern Italy to visit his ailing father.
Austria - "Happy End" (Michael Haneke) - An upper-crust family deteriorates against the backdrop of the European refugee crisis. Haneke's latest, middlingly-received at Cannes
Azerbaijan - "Pomegranate Orchard" (Ilgar Najaf) - prodigal-son-returns drama inspired by 'The Cherry Orchard'
Bangladesh - "The Cage" (Akram Khan) - A last-minute change in submission from Jahangir Alam Sumon's musical rom-com "Shona Bondhu", this film is a government-funded production about migration following the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947
Belgium - "Racer and the Jailbird' (Michaël R. Roskam) - romance between a gangster and a racing driver starring Matthias Schoenaerts and Adèle Exarchopoulos. Venice out-of-comp premiere
Bolivia - "Dark Skull" (Kiro Russo) - An atmospheric, abstract drama set in the world of tin miners in Western Bolivia
Bosnia & Herzegovina - "Men Don't Cry" (Alen Drljević) - A group of Yugoslav War vets doing group therapy
Brazil - "Bingo: The King of the Mornings" (Daniel Rezende) - A biopic about the actor who played Bozo the Clown in Brazil
Bulgaria - "Glory" (Kristina Grozeva & Petar Valchanov) - A railway trackman notifies his discovery of a large amount of money to the authorities, who use it as a PR stunt to deflect from a brewing government corruption scandal
Cambodia - "First They Killed My Father" (Angelina Jolie) - A true story about a 5 year-old girl who is drafted as a child soldier during the Khmer Rouge years in Cambodia. Based on the memoir by Loung Ung
Canada - "Hochelaga, Land of Souls" (François Girard) - A dramatisation of several centuries of Québécois history, framed through an archaeological dig prompted by the opening of a sinkhole in the modern day
Chile - "A Fantastic Woman" (Sebastián Lelio) - After her older boyfriend dies suddenly, a trans woman in Chile must fight for recognition of their relationship from both the law and his family. Has also generated big buzz for its lead actress Daniela Vega, who could be someone to watch for a nomination regardless of whether this is shortlisted
China - "Wolf Warrior 2" (Wu Jing) - A very surprising choice from a slate of much higher-profile (and more 'prestige'-palatable) films, this is an action-thriller sequel about a mercenary for hire who is assigned to protect medical workers against insurgents in an "unnamed African country" (wish they'd stop doing 'unnamed African country' tropes in films)
Colombia - "Guilty Men" (Iván Gaona) - Set in 2005, a trucker plays a cat-and-mouse game with a guerrilla paramilitary group while trying to connect with his lover
Costa Rica - "The Sound of Things" (Ariel Escalante) - A woman reeling from the deaths of three of her loved ones finds a reason to keep going when a former friend asks for her help managing an illness
Croatia - "Quit Staring at My Plate" (Hana Jušić) - A withdrawn woman gets a chance to come out of her shell when her abusive father has a stroke
Czech Republic - "Ice Mother" (Bohdan Sláma) - A 67 year-old mother and grandmother goes through a 3/4-life crisis
Denmark - "You Disappear" (Peter Schønau Fog) - The story of a middle-aged couple whose lives are rocked when the husband is diagnosed with a brain tumour. Stars Trine Dyrholm and the late Michael Nyqvist, who died this year
Dominican Republic - "Woodpeckers" (José María Cabral) - Inmates in adjacent women's and men's prisons communicate by code, sparking a 'long-distance' romance
Ecuador - "Alba" (Ana Cristina Barragán) - An 11 year-old girl must move in with her father when her mother falls ill. The two must confront their distant relationship head-on
Egypt - "Sheikh Jackson" (Amr Salama) - A conservative imam with a private adoration for Michael Jackson spirals into a personal crisis after hearing the news of his idol's death. Sounds interesting!
Estonia - "November" (Rainer Sarnet) - A folkloric fantasy-romance about a peasant girl and a village boy in a 19th century Estonia populated by fairytale creatures
Finland - "Tom of Finland" (Dome Karukoski) - A biopic of the famed and influential gay erotic artist Tom of Finland
France - "BPM (Beats per Minute)" (Robin Campillo) - Grand Prix winner at Cannes this year, it tells the story of a group of AIDS activists working with ACT UP in the early 90s
Georgia - "Scary Mother" (Ana Urushadze) - A psychological thriller about a middle-class housewife who seeks an escape through writing an erotic novel
Germany - "In the Fade" (Fatih Akın) - A white woman seeks to avenge the murder of her Kurdish husband and son by neo-Nazis. Best Actress prize at Cannes for Diane Kruger
Greece - "Amerika Square" (Yannis Sakaridis) - A racist old man and a young tattoo artist in Athens find themselves thrown into conflict when a Syrian refugee enters their lives
Haiti - "Ayiti Mon Amour" (Guetty Felin) - An allegorical drama about the Haitian past and present centred around four characters living in a small, impoverished village. Haiti's first submission, and by a female director no least. Has had some great festival receptions
Honduras - "Morazán" (Hispando Durón) - The biography of a Honduran freedom fighter and pan-central-american revotionary, Francisco Morazán
Hong Kong - "Mad World" (Wong Chun) - A former financial analyst suffering from bipolar disorder is released from a mental institution into the care of his truck-driver father
Hungary - "On Body and Soul" (Enyedi Ildikó) - A man and a woman working in a slaughterhouse find an otherworldly romantic connection with each other through a recurring dream they both experience. Winner of the Golden Bear at Berlin this year
Iceland - "Under the Tree" (Hafsteinn Gunnar Sigurðsson) - A quartet of neighbours find themselves in an escalating conflict over a tree that borders their properties. This black comedy got strong reviews at TIFF and has been picked up by Magnolia for a US release
India - "Newton" (Amit V Masurkar) - A black comedy about a government clerk tasked with holding fair elections in an Indian region beset by guerrilla forces
Indonesia - "Turah" (Wicaksono Wisnu Legowo) - Details the lives of several families living in a poor village in Central Java
Iran - "Breath" (Narges Abyar) - A young girl uses daydreaming and fantasy to cope with the tumultuous years between the Iranian Revolution and the Iran-Iraq War
Iraq - "The Dark Wind" (Hussein Hassan) - Love story set during the ISIS seizure of Sinjar and their genocide of the Yazidi people
Ireland - "Song of Granite" (Pat Collins) - A biography of Irish folk songer Joe Heaney
Israel - "Foxtrot" (Samuel Maoz) - Caused a sensation at Venice this year. Tells parallel stories of an IDF soldier who is killed and of his parents in the wake of his death
Italy - "A Ciambra" (Jonas Carpignano) - A 14 year-old Romani boy in Calabria searches for his older brother after the brother disappears. Well-received at Cannes' Directors' Fortnight this year
Japan - "Her Love Boils Bathwater" (Ryōta Nakano) - A mother and housewife discovers she has terminal cancer and tries to work through her personal bucket list. Winner of the last Best Actress prize at the Japanese equivalent of the Oscars, for Rie Miyazawa.
Kazakhstan - "The Road to Mother" (Akan Satayev) - A mother walks to the outskirts of her village every dawn and dusk for twenty years in the hopes of meeting her son, missing in the wars of the 1930s
Kenya - "Kati Kati" (Mbithi Masya) - A young girl finds herself in a fantastical purgatory where she meets a variety of colourful characters
Kosovo - "Unwanted" (Edon Rizvanolli) - A Kosovar mother and son living in exile in the Netherlands after the Balkans War deal with social and personal crises
Kyrgyzstan - "Centaur" (Aktan Abdykalykov) - A former horse thief living in a Bishkek slum is given the opportunity for one more job, carrying with it the promise of local stardom
Laos - "Dearest Sister" (Mattie Do) - A supernatural horror film about a village woman who moves to the city to care for her progressively blind cousin, who can speak to ghosts. The main character exploits her cousin's gift for personal gain. Laos' first ever submission in this category
Latvia - "The Chronicles of Melanie" (Viesturs Kairišs) - A WWII-set drama about a mother and son fighting to survive in a Siberian gulag
Lebanon - "The Insult" (Ziad Doueiri) - A Lebanese Christian and the Palestinian refugee he hires to do home maintenance have a violent altercation that unravels into a nationally-covered court case. Recently premiered at Venice to solid reviews
Lithuania - "Frost" (Šarūnas Bartas) - Two Lithuanian aid workers travel through the war-torn Donbass region of Ukraine. Don't know what the point of submitting this was because there is no realm of possibility where the average Academy voter would respond to a Bartas film (I'm a pretty hardcore slow-cinema aficionado and even I have issues with his stuff), not to mention this one got particularly poor reviews
Luxembourg - "Barrage" (Laura Schroeder) - Three generations of a family find conflict and reconciliation over one turbulent weekend. Starring real-life mother-and-daughter duo Isabelle Huppert and Lolita Chammah (who have co-starred before in Marc Fitoussi's enjoyably 'Cocapabana' - worth it for a great comedic Huppert performance and character)
Mexico - "Tempestad" (Tatiana Huezo) - A documentary following the stories of two women who survived human trafficking in Mexico
Mongola - "The Children of Genghis" (Zolbayar Dorj) - The sons of a legendary horse trainer fight to take up his legacy with escalating results
Morocco - "Razzia" (Nabil Ayouch) - A 'kaleidoscopic drama' following five lives across 30 years of Moroccan history, all centred on the leadup to and the reverberating effects of the violent street protests of 2015 in Casablanca
Mozambique - "The Train of Salt and Sugar" (Licínio Azevedo) - The story of ordinary people fighting to survive in the civil war of the 1980s
Nepal - "White Sun" (Deepak Rauniyar) - Two brothers, who fought on opposite sides in the Nepali Civil War, return home to bury their dead father
Netherlands - "Layla M." (Mijke de Jong) - A Muslim woman in Amsterdam is radicalised by her husband but becomes disillusioned after they move into a fundamentalist cell in Jordan
New Zealand - "One Thousand Ropes" (Tusi Tamasese) - A supernatural family drama about a father and daughter reconnecting over their shared baggage
Norway - "Thelma" (Joachim Trier) - A student in Oslo discovers she has supernatural powers
Pakistan - "Saawan" (Farhan Alam) - A disabled child fights for survival in the hostile deserts of Pakistan. This makes two Urdu-language submissions this year, after the UK's
Palestine - "Wajib" (Annemarie Jacir) - A father sets off on a road trip to deliver his daughter's wedding invitations alongside his estranged son. Stars real-life father and son Mohammad Bakri and Saleh Bakri
Panama - "Beyond Brotherhood" (Arianne Benedetti) - Two siblings fight to survive living on the streets
Paraguay - "Los buscadores" (Juan Carlos Maneglia & Tana Schembori) - A news boy discovers a Paraguayan War-era treasure map amongst his grandfather's belongings and decides to investigate the location of the purported treasure, now an embassy
Peru - "Rosa Chumbe" (Jonatan Relayze) - A policewoman cares for her grandson after her daughter steals money and abandons the baby
Philippines - "Birdshot" (Mikhail Red) - The daughter of a wildlife sanctuary caretaker accidentally kills an endangered Philippine eagle, leading to a game of cat-and-mouse with local authorities
Poland - "Spoor" (Agnieszka Holland) - An elderly woman living in isolation witnesses a series of murders, but the authorities refuse to believe her. Strong reviews at Berlin (for a Holland film), this could be a shortlist contender
Portugal - "Saint George" (Marco Martins) - Set during the height of the GFC in Portugal, an unemployed boxer must take a dangerous job with a debt-collection agency in order to support his family
Romania - "The Fixer" (Adrian Sitaru) - A journalist enters murky ethical territory while covering the story of an underage prostitute in Romania's capital
Russia - "Loveless" (Andrei Zvyagintsev) - A couple in the midst of divorce are thrown for a loop when their 12 year-old son goes missing. Won the Jury Prize at Cannes this year
Senegal - "Félicité" (Alain Gomis) - Good reviews at Berlin this year, this kaleidoscopic music-infused drama is about a bar singer fighting to raise funds for her ill son's medical care
Serbia - "Requiem for Mrs. J" (Bojan Vuletić) - A black-comedy about a widow planning to commit suicide on the anniversary of her husband's death
Singapore - "Pop Aye" (Kirsten Tan) - A big-city architect encounters an elephant he'd befriended in his childhood and sets off on a journey with his old pal back to his ancestral village
Slovakia - "The Line" (Peter Bebjak) - Set in 2007 before Slovakia joined the Schengen Zone, follows the exploits of a gang of smugglers moving contraband from Ukraine into the EU
Slovenia - "The Miner" (Hanna Antonina Wojcik-Slak) - A miner discovers a WWII mass grave, and must face his own conscience to make a decision after his boss pressures him to keep quiet
South Africa - "The Wound" (John Trengove) - Tracks the close relationship between two men undergoing a Xhosa initiation ritual
South Korea - "A Taxi Driver" (Jang Hoon) - An everyman taxi driver accidentally becomes involved with a reporter covering the events of the Gwangju Uprising in 1980. Stars Song Kang-ho and Thomas Kretschmann
Spain - "Summer 1993" (Carla Simón) - A young orphan girl goes to live with her uncle after her parents die of AIDS
Sweden - "The Square" (Ruben Östlund) - Social satire set in the European art world. Palme d'Or winner at Cannes this year
Switzerland - "The Divine Order" (Petra Biondina Volpe) - Centred around a women's rights activist fighting for suffrage in 1971 Switzerland (Switzerland was the last Western republic to grant women's suffrage)
Syria - "Little Gandhi" (Sam Kadi) - Syria has a deep and rich anti-establishment film history but censorship and risk of detainment and death is severe for filmmakers who attempt to expose government failings and atrocities, so it's INCREDIBLY surprising that their Film & Television Board submitted this documentary about the murder of a peace activist and revolutionary symbol from the 2011 protests
Taiwan - "Small Talk" (Huang Hui-chen) - A documentary about the troubled relationship between the director and her estranged mother, a lesbian Taoist priestess who neglected her throughout her childhood
Thailand - "By the Time It Gets Dark" (Anocha Suwichakornpong) - An experimental political film about the production of a movie about a 1976 military massacre of student protestors in Bangkok
Tunisia - "The Last of Us" (Ala Eddine Slim) - An avant-garde fantasy about a refugee who has otherworldly experiences while trekking through the desert. No dialogue
Turkey - "Ayla: The Daughter of War" (Can Ulkay) - A Turkish soldier fighting in the Korean war becomes a surrogate father to an orphaned Korean girl
Ukraine - "Black Level" (Valentyn Vasyanovych) - A wedding photographer suffers a midlife crisis as his family falls apart
United Kingdom - "My Pure Land" (Sarmad Masud) - A mother and two daughters in Pakistan must defend their land from a band of 200 bandits
Uruguay - "Another History of the World" (Guillermo Casanova) - A pair of friends are torn apart when one is arrested for political dissent. The other must fight for his freedom
Venezuela - "El Inca" (Ignacio Castillo Cottin) - A story about the boxer Edwin Valero who committed suicide after killing his wife. This is an interesting and politicised choice in the wake of Maduro's attacks on the judiciary due to having been pulled from theatres in Venezuela due to a federal judge siding with Valero's family in a lawsuit against the filmmakers.
Vietnam - "Father and Son" (Lương Đình Dũng) - A poor boy with an incurable illness and his blind father live by a river, where the magic of nature and the pain of illness are examined from a child's point of view

Eligible countries that did not submit:
Bhutan - Bhutan has not made any official statements yet - they haven't submitted since 1999 but were apparently readying a submission committee specifically for the well-received film "Hema Hema: Sing Me a Song While I Wait" by Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche, though it was unexpectedly and controversially banned domestically by the Bhutanese government and will no longer meet the submission criteria, so it's unclear whether they'll still go forward with a submission for another film.
Ghana - Poor Ghana was very excited to submit for the first time this year, but didn't end up making a decision due to the paucity of contenders.
Macedonia - Macedonia has decided not to submit this year.
Montenegro - Montenegro announced that it did not receive enough qualifying submissions and has decided not to put forward a film for contention this year.
United Arab Emirates - The UAE was set to submit for the first time, too, but ended up not sending a candidate for some reason.

First time submitters are Haiti, Honduras, Laos, Mozambique, Senegal and Syria (??).


So far, 26 of the submissions are directed by women, which may be a record in this category:
Afghanistan
Argentina
Armenia
Australia
Bulgaria
Cambodia
Croatia
Ecuador
Georgia
Haiti
Hungary
Iran
Laos
Luxembourg
Mexico
Netherlands
Palestine
Panama
Paraguay
Poland
Singapore
Slovenia
Spain
Switzerland
Taiwan
Thailand
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Re: List of submissions to the 90th Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film (coming soon)

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Though Loveless is scathing of Putin's Russia and that may help it.
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Re: List of submissions to the 90th Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film (coming soon)

Post by Mister Tee »

bizarre wrote:One thing to take into account, though it might seem silly now - as the liberal establishment is wrapped up in a McCarthyite frenzy, the very centre-blue Hollywood set may have some kneejerk reactions to the idea of awarding anything coming out of Russia.
McCarthyite frenzy? McCarty had pretend lists of imagined traitors. What we're dealing with now is potential collusion between Russia and a U.S. presidential candidate, whose very election may have been enabled by illegal interference. One of these is not like the other.
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Re: List of submissions to the 90th Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film (coming soon)

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One thing to take into account, though it might seem silly now - as the liberal establishment is wrapped up in a McCarthyite frenzy, the very centre-blue Hollywood set may have some kneejerk reactions to the idea of awarding anything coming out of Russia.
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Re: List of submissions to the 90th Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film (coming soon)

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I have just watch Glory from Bulgaria which I had pegged, based on excellent reviews, as a possible candidate.

Having now seen the film I feel that it will struggle to make the shortlist. This has nothing to do with the quality of the film - it's very good and directors Kristina Grozeva & Petar Valchanov certainly deliver on the promise they showed with their earlier film The Lesson (2014).

It's a small intimate film though it deals with very significant issues. It's a social tale/moral fable, dramatic but with a good healthy dose of black human and tops it all off with a knock-out ending. Margita Gosheva who starred in the directors earlier work The Lesson delivers another complex and very satisfying performance. It would be wonderful to see this film make it not only as a reward for a job well done but it would help to draw more attention to these talented young filmmakers.
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Re: List of submissions to the 90th Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film (coming soon)

Post by Precious Doll »

Big Magilla wrote:
bizarre wrote:I'm predicting the 9-film shortlist to be: France, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Netherlands, Palestine, Poland and Switzerland, with a few submissions left to be announced. My nomination predictions are Italy, France, Israel, Hungary and Palestine with France for the win.
I know nothing about any of these films, but from your excellent descriptions, I would think Germany, rather than Italy, would place alongside France, Israel, Hungary and Palestine, with Germany possibly even winning.
In the Fade won't win. It will struggle to make the shortlist and I like the film but the subject matter is just too sensitive in the world we live in today. It's difficult to say exactly why I feel that what without spoiling the film for others and I recommend anyone with an interest in seeing the film not to read anything about it. All I knew when I saw the film was that Diane Kruger (who won Best Actress at Cannes only because it was a very weak year for leading ladies - though she is good in the film) played a woman whose husband & young son are killed in a targeted terrorist attack in Hamburg. You find that out in the first 10 minutes so I'm not spoiling anything with that description, and the film has a long way to go after that. It's worth noting that In the Fade was not well received by some critics at Cannes.

Really hoping France doesn't make the cut. 120 BPM is good but doesn't do the subject matter justice and Robin Campillo is such a dull journeyman director with no real film making flare. The subject matter has been covered before. And better. But the AIDs epidemic as far from over and Hollywood has a long association with the fight against AIDs given the high number of tragic deaths over the years. The film will resonate with those in Hollywood around long enough to remember the Reagan administrations lack of action on the matter. It appears from the film, based on Robin Campillo's personal experiences, that France wasn't much better.

Then again, I did say that The Salesman wouldn't make it last year and look what happened. I'm still sticking with A Fantastic Woman.
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Re: List of submissions to the 90th Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film (coming soon)

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bizarre wrote:I'm predicting the 9-film shortlist to be: France, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Netherlands, Palestine, Poland and Switzerland, with a few submissions left to be announced. My nomination predictions are Italy, France, Israel, Hungary and Palestine with France for the win.
I know nothing about any of these films, but from your excellent descriptions, I would think Germany, rather than Italy, would place alongside France, Israel, Hungary and Palestine, with Germany possibly even winning.
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Re: List of submissions to the 90th Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film (coming soon)

Post by Precious Doll »

It's so hard to pick just nine even in a weaker than usual year. Last year I rated the chances of Tanna, The Salesman & It's Only the End of the World as all highly unlikely to not going to happen. Two of them made the final five and the other made the final nine.

Seeing films also colours ones perceptions of a films chances. I have seen 13 of the films and will be watching another 2 this weekend.

So based on what I have seen and what I have heard or read about from people that have seen some of the films and I have and haven't seen my guesses are within these countries:

Bulgaria, Chile (I still think A Fantastic Woman will come through as the winner), Czech Republic, France, Georgia, Hungary, Israel, Norway, Russia, Spain, Sweden & Argentina if they select Zama.

Sweden, Russia to so degree Hungary will need the committee's help.

I've probably jinxed some of these films by predicting them but there are always glaring omissions.
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