Foreign Language Film Submissions

[Cinemanolis]

I predicted this some time ago, though where I can't exactly remember, but France is submitting The Intouchables. It's their strongest shot at a nomination in years and could very well be the strongest competition for Amour.

It was a huge hit in Greece as well. I do believe it's the frontrunner.

[ITALIANO]

I predicted this some time ago, though where I can't exactly remember, but France is submitting The Intouchables. It's their strongest shot at a nomination in years and could very well be the strongest competition for Amour.

It is definitely the strongest competition for Amour. I havent seen it, but in Italy it has been a big, big hit - one of the most successful French movies ever here, and successful in all the other European countries where it has been shown, too.

[mlrg]

I predicted this some time ago, though where I can't exactly remember, but France is submitting The Intouchables. It's their strongest shot at a nomination in years and could very well be the strongest competition for Amour.

It was a tremendous box office success here in Portugal during the last months.

It's a very appealing story for the Academy and it's probably the front runner to take home the Oscar.

[OscarGuy]

I predicted this some time ago, though where I can't exactly remember, but France is submitting The Intouchables. It's their strongest shot at a nomination in years and could very well be the strongest competition for Amour.

[ITALIANO]

Italy will be the last to decide, as always, and not only in this field. There is, of course, a committee, but it's composed of only a few people (some producers, one or two directors, a few critics) and they sometimes seem to choose based more on personal relationships than on quality, or at on a real knowledge of how the Oscars work - which has led in the recent past to obviously ridiculous choices. But then it was easier once, when one had to choose from names like Fellini, Scola, Monicelli, Antonioni...

This year the most logical choice would have been, in theory, Marco Bellocchio's Sleeping Beauty. Bellocchio is one of the last surviving lions of the "great" Italian cinema, still a prolific director whose recent Vincere was well-received even by the American critics. The only time one of his movies had been submitted for Foreign Film had been in 1967. That was only his second movie, China is Near, and it wasn't nominated (and back then Italian movies were ALWAYS nominated). Sleeping Beauty is about an "important" subject, euthanasia, probably more important these days in Italy than anywhere else because of a recent, sad episode (Eluana Englaro, a young girl, was in a coma for 17 years with no possibility of recovering and her father tried every legal way to put an end to her situation, with the strong opposition of the catholic Church and the politicians who follow it). It is brilliantly acted by a cast of Italian stars and by Isabelle Huppert, speaking Italian, as a former actress who has left her career to be close to her daughter who's in a coma after a car accident, and has become a religious fanatic in order to still have a hope that the girl might, one day, get back to life. The movie has maybe a Stanley Kramer approach to the subject (every single aspect or opinion is embodied by a character), but while not perfect it isn't banal.

But there are problems. It was sent to Venice, obviously with the purpose of bringing home an award, any award - and it didn't get anything. And it's SO sad, so dark - exactly the kind of movie that Italians, in the middle of a big economical crisis, don't want to see. Its box-office has been very disappointing, and the press has cruelly pointed out that it has even been beaten by something called What to Expect When You Are Expecting, an American comedy nobody had heard of.

They may still send this movie in the end, but I personally believe that they will pick another one, one which at least HAS won an award - the Grand Prix at Cannes: Matteo Garrone's Reality, an intentionally grotesque look at how taking part to the Big Brother changes the life of a poor family from Naples.

It doesn't really matter, though - for different reasons, I don't think either can actually get nominated, and of course a win is impossible.

[anonymous1980]

The Philippines has officially picked Bwakaw as its entry. I'm kicking myself for not checking it out while it was being screened (I opted instead for Brillante Mendoza's Captive). It's about an elderly gay man who forms a special friendship with a stray mutt. It received really good reviews and it was a festival hit. Based on the reviews and the story, I think it has a decent shot.

[Precious Doll]

I thought that Portugal would have submitted Tabu but it's chances of a nomination would have been very slim.

Anyway, Austria with Amour has this all sewn up. I don't think I have ever been so confident of a win in this category this early.

[bizarre]

From what I hear, Blood of My Blood is the kind of fake-arthouse miserablism that usually flies better with the Academy, no?

ETA: I haven't seen Tabu, but claiming that Portugal would have been a shoo-in with that submission strikes me as a similar to those who were monumentally shocked when Uncle Boonmee didn't make the final shortlists in 2010.

[mlrg]

Well, Portugal just killed it's chances of finally getting nominated for an Oscar as our Academy selected the movie "Blood of My Blood" to represent our country instead of "Tabu" who's getting rave reviews during the whole festival circuit in 2012 (since it's premiere in Berlin to Toronto last week)

[anonymous1980]

South Korea picked the Venice Film Festival winner Kim Ki-duk's Pieta.

[Precious Doll]

Here are what appear to be the official submissions thus far:

Australia: "Lore". Director: Cate Shortland. Language: German.

Austria: "Amour". Director: Michael Haneke. Language: French.

Azerbaijan: "Buta". Director: Ilgar Najaf. Language: Azeri.

Cambodia: "Lost Loves". Director: Chhay Bora. Language: Khmer.

Germany: "Barbara". DIrector: Christian Petzold. Language: German.

Greece: "Unfair World". Director: Filippos Tsitos. Language: Greek.

Hungary: "Just the Wind". Director: Benedek Fliegauf. Language: Hungarian.

Japan: "Our Homeland". DIrector: Yong-hi Yang. Language: Japanese.

Morocco: "Death for Sale". Director: Faouzi Bensaidi. Language: Arabic.

Netherlands: "Kauwboy". Director: Boudewijn Koole. Language: Dutch.

Poland: "80 Million". Director: Waldemar Krzystek. Language: Polish.

Serbia: "When Day Breaks". Director: Goran Paskalijević. Language: Serbian.

Sweden: "The Hypnotist". Director: Lasse Hallstrom. Language: Swedish.

Ukraine: "Firecrosser". Director: Mykhailo Illienko. Language: Russian.

Venezuela: "Rock, Paper, Sccisors". Director: Hernan Jabes. Language: Spanish

[OscarGuy]

The requirements are based on having a majority of the film's major creative elements being from the country of submission. So, as long as the vast majority of crew, producers, directors, etc, are Austrian, then they would be permitted to submit the film.

[Big Magilla]

Ah, so. Now that you mention it, I remember the question in relation to Water.

[Precious Doll]

From Wikipedia (not always the most reliable source):

Since the 2006 (79th) Academy Awards, submitted films no longer have to be in an official language of the submitting country.[12] This requirement had previously prevented countries from submitting films where the majority of the dialogue was spoken in a language that was non-native to the submitting country, and the Academy's executive director explicitly cited as a reason for the rule change the case of the Italian film Private (2004), which was disqualified simply because its main spoken languages were Arabic and Hebrew, neither of which are indigenous languages of Italy.[13] This rule change enabled a country like Canada to receive a nomination for a Hindi-language film, Water.

So it does look like Austria can submit Amour.

[Big Magilla]

Is Amour even eligible? It's a French-language France-German-Austrian co-production shot in France. How can that be France's official choice? Isn't that why Kieslowski and Haneke's previous features aside from The White Ribbon failed to make it in.

It's not, it's Austria's. Not sure what the foreign language requirmenets are at this point. If I remember correctly, at one point they had come up with a rule that said a certain percentage of the spken language had to be the language of the country of submission. German is the princiapl language of Austria with Croaiton and Hungarian also poken in certain areas, but not French. The film is mostly in French, according to the Imdb. with some dialogue in English. But maybe I'm misrememberering or they've dropped the rule.