It's still some time away from the 91st Academy Awards on February 24 next year, but the countdown to the best foreign-language film nominations has begun. As of press time, 70 countries and regions have submitted lists of selected films (92 films were registered last year). As is customary, the organizers will later select a large list of nine films, and then further narrow it down to five finalists. Last year's registration deadline was October 2, and Chinese mainland's selection work "Wolf Warrior 2" failed to enter the big list, and which movie will be sent to "Chong Ao" this year has not yet been revealed.
"Big Buddha Plus" and "Operation Red Sea" won glory for Chinese films
Although Chinese mainland's selection films are often stuck with deadlines to declare, or not announced in advance, until the organizers reveal, foreign media reports, we can know whether it is a donkey is a horse, but Taiwan and Hong Kong, China's sending films will generally be determined before the end of September, and this year is no exception.
This year, a total of 15 films in Taiwan have been eligible for the election, including many popular works such as "Blood Guanyin" and the animated film "Happiness Road", and in the end, Huang Xinyao's "Big Buddha Plus" won the competition with its "excellent technology, conciseness, humorous style and special film grammar to present the current situation of Taiwanese society". The film has previously won several awards at the Golden Horse Awards for Best Screenplay, Cinematography, Original Score, Original Song, New Director and so on.
The Great Buddha Plus
Hong Kong sent the Red Sea Operation. Although the cast of the film is almost all from the mainland, director Lin Chaoxian and one of the screenwriters, Lin Mingjie, are natives of Hong Kong, and they are also co-produced by the two places, and Emperor Film participates in the production. It won several candidate films such as "Qimen Dunjia", "To Catch a Demon 2", "Golden Brothers", "Detective Dong Du", "Blue Sky and White Clouds" and "No. 1 Zhongying Street", and was recommended by the Hong Kong Film Producers Association.
Operation Red Sea
Popular films at major film festivals are not to be tolerated
As for other regions, a number of award-winning works or hit films at major film festivals this year are not to be tolerated. For example, at the Cannes Film Festival, Palme d'Or winner "Thief Family" represents Japan, Best Director Winner "Cold War" represents Poland, "A Kind of Attention" winner "Border" represents Sweden, "Golden Camera Award" winner "Girl" represents Belgium, and Grand Jury Prize winner "Capernaum" represents Lebanon. Although Lee Cangdong's "Burning" returned home, it was highly praised by film critics, and it was reasonable to send it on behalf of South Korea. This is his third oscar hit after 2002's Oasis and 2007's Miyang. In addition, the famous director Nuri Bige Ceylon's "Wild Pear Tree" will also represent Turkey's "Okio".
Family of Thieves
"Burning"
Alfonso Cuarón's rome, which has just won the highest honor, the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, represented Mexico.
Previously, the producer Netflix had arranged a week of theatrical screenings for "Roma" in Mexico City, which made it successfully eligible for the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film - that is, by September 30, it could have seven consecutive days of screenings in any theater in the country it registered. As for the North American market, it is reported that the film will land on the Netflix platform and some theaters on December 14 to qualify for other Oscar awards. Speaking about the film, Cuarón once told the media: "90% of the scenes are derived from my own memories, but overall, those are not only about my memories, it is about how my life was shaped, it is about how I came to be in this way." The script is very specific, specific to the sound and environment in each scene. However, after the script was completed, I did not show it to anyone. During the filming, none of the crew members or actors had the script in their hands. Yalitza Aparicio, the actor who was 'electrocuted' for the first time, even said that the film's secrecy work was so good that she once suspected that it was a pretense, that the film was fake, and that it was actually a business of the trafficking syndicate. ”
Rome
Laszlo Nemes, who won the International Film Critics League Award at this year's Venice Film Festival, presented his new film "Sunset" on behalf of Hungary. In 2016, he won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film for "Son of Thor". The film is 142 minutes long, and I don't know if I can get the Oscar judges to have enough patience to watch it.
Paraguay's film Heiress won two trophies for Best Actress and Best New Director at this year's Berlin Film Festival. "Post-70s" director Marcelo Martinessi (Marcelo Martinessi) first directed the tube, and it is not easy to achieve such results. Even more difficult, due to the rather thin tradition of Paraguayan cinema, this is the third time that the country has sent a film to compete for the Oscar.
Bosnia and Herzegovina selected the female director Aida Begić's work "Beni Bırakma" about the life of Syrian refugees, which was invited to participate in the first Pingyao International Film Festival and was well received by Chinese audiences. Historically, Bosnian director Danis Tanovic's "No Man's Land" won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2001.
The Czech Republic selected Slovenian director Olmo Omerzu's Czech-Slovenian co-production Winter Flies, a road film that won the Best Director Award at this year's Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. Historically, Czech director Jan Sverák's Kolya won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1996.
Croatia's newcomer director Ivan Salaj's "The Eight Commissioner," based on the country's best-selling novel, tells the interesting story of a scandal-ridden politician who is sent to a remote island with no computer network and no cell phone signal to take shelter. When he took office, his first task was to organize a successful national election, and all seven of his predecessors failed.
Chile chose silvio Caiozzi's "And Suddenly the Dawn." The film is the winner of this year's Montreal Film Festival's "American Grand Prix". Gaiozi has been around since the 1970s as a director of photography for the famous Chilean director Raoul Ruiz. The Chilean film "Ordinary Woman" was the winner of best foreign language film at this year's 90th Academy Awards.
The United Kingdom chose the British-French co-production "I Am Not a Witch". Set in a small African village, the film tells the story of an eight-year-old girl who is considered a witch and sentenced to death. Although the film has limited popularity, Zambian female director Rungano Nyoni also won the British Independent Film Award for Best Director.
Israel chose to send the Israeli-German co-production "The Cakemaker" (The Cakemaker). In the selection of the Oiffel Award, the highest honor in the Israeli film industry, which just ended in September, this gay-themed animated film won 6 awards, including best picture, best director, and best screenplay, which is also a logical representative of the Israeli country's "rush to Austria". Director Ofir Raul Graizer is a "post-80s" whose feature film debut is his feature film debut.
The jury of the French group of the film power decided to send the selection of films
In France, the qualification for the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film this time has caused a lot of controversy. Due to the large number of films that wish to obtain this qualification, and the general quality of the "output" of the film's birthplace, a jury had to be formed to decide who to send to "rush the Olympics".
So a jury of seven people, including Cannes Film Festival leader Fumo and famous director Claire Denis, selected a small list, including Gaspa Nord's "Climax", Claude Landsmann's four-and-a-half-hour posthumous work "Four Sisters", "Lady Junguier" based on the story of Diderot's novel "Fatalist Jacques and His Master", Emmanuel Finch's "Pain" and Xavier Legrand's "Guardianship" five works. In the end, after heated discussion, "Pain", based on Duras's novel of the same name, won the election.
"Pain"
The failure of the famous director Olivier Assayas's new work "Nonfiction" has made him clearly dissatisfied. The reason given by the relevant departments is that according to the usual rules, the work must be released in French theaters before September 30 to qualify for the Oscars for France, but the release time of "Non-Fiction" in France is set for January 16 next year.
The film has previously held a world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, then moved to the Telluride Film Festival in the United States, the Toronto Film Festival in Canada, and next month it will land at the New York Film Festival, the industry's so-called four major film festivals in autumn. When it comes to exposure and international influence, it is definitely better than films such as "Pain". As a result, he didn't even touch the opportunity to get started, forcing the "battle-hardened" Assayas to complain this time: "I started making movies in 1986, and since 1994, every film I have been released in American theaters, and I believe that there should not be many French directors who can do this." In an interview with the American "Variety" magazine, he said, "But my previous films have never been shortlisted for the big list of French 'Chong Olympic films', and I don't care." However, this time is different, I think the situation of "Non-Fiction" is particularly good, very few films can go through the four major film festivals in the autumn, I think this should be very helpful for its 'Rushing Olympic', unfortunately... I don't know what their criteria for selecting films are, but it would be ridiculous to choose one of the most internationally recognizable French films and turn out to have no regard for non-fiction at all. ”
In fact, the same thing happened in 2013's "Adele's Life". After winning the Palme d'Or at Cannes, the film was also well received at major film festivals in the United States, and as a result, it lost the opportunity to compete for the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film because it was only released in France in October.
Perhaps because of its own set of standards and rules, although the French film industry is well-known worldwide, it has only won once in the Competition for Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars – "Indochina" in 1993.
Same-sex, feminist, historical themes are popular
The decision to send the Oscar for best foreign language film was originally an internal affair of film institutions in various countries and regions, but this year's Kenyan film "Rafiki" has attracted a lot of international attention. The gay film, which was shortlisted for the "One Kind of Attention" section of the Cannes Film Festival, initially failed to get permission to be released in Kenya, and female director Wanuri Kahiu took the case to the Nairobi High Court. In the end, the female judge decided: "Kenyan society should not be so weak, weak enough to accept gay themes." The freedom we enjoy today was paid the ultimate price to many Kenyans in the past. The film was then rated as a "18 forbidden" film, and successfully won a one-week domestic release schedule, which met the oscar registration conditions.
However, the Kenya Film Classification Board remained tough, with the chairman publicly stating that he regretted the court's decision, and although they could only obey it, "the result is very sad, not only for our film industry, but also for all Kenyans who hold a moral stance." The film glorifies gay love, but as a result, it has the opportunity to represent the image of our country and appear in front of people all over the world. Our Committee insists that Kenyan cinema should reflect the most mainstream values of Kenyans. Homosexuality is certainly not among them."
Compared with Kenya's conservative attitude, the selection of films from several Asian countries is eye-catching. Thailand selected the female director Anucha Beniyawatana's gay romance "Farewell to Jasmine", Indonesia selected the female director Molly Suya's feminist violence film "Marina's Killing Quadrilogue", and India selected the female director Lima Das's anti-sexist youth film "Country Rock Girl". Whether or not you can finalize, at least it reflects an attitude and tendency.
Russia's "Sobibor" is the first work of the country's popular movie star Konstantin Khabenskiy to "act and direct". Habinski is well known to fans for starring in films such as "The Night's Watchman" and "The Sun Watchman". Sobibor was a concentration camp established by the Nazis in Poland during World War II, and after careful planning, 600 prisoners imprisoned here rioted and escaped, and 300 people eventually escaped, becoming a miracle in World War II. In the 1980s, the United Kingdom filmed a related theme work "Escape from Sobibor", which was introduced to China and broadcast, leaving a deep impression on the audience at that time.
Romania's new work, I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians, also has to do with real events in history. The story tells the story of a director who prepares to bring the massacre of Jews by the Romanian army in 1941 to the theatrical stage.
In addition, there are some films that are estimated to be difficult to enter the final shortlist, but it is also worth mentioning. Mohamed Al Daradji's "The Journey," sent from Iraq, for example, tells a tragic story about the terrorist "woman bomb." The film was released in Iraq on March 1 this year, and it is the first Iraqi domestic film to be released in the past 27 years!
There's also Panama for the documentary Ruben Blades Is Not My Name. The film chronicles the life story of Panama's most popular singer Ruben Bradders, who developed in Hollywood, won several Grammy Awards, a master's degree in international law from Harvard University, served as Panama's minister of tourism, and ran for president of Pakistan. The film's director, Abner Benaim, born in 1971 and only 47 years old, is already the godfather of Panamanian cinema. His debut film "Opportunity" completed in 2009 was panama's first domestic film in the past half century, and as a result, it triggered a national movie boom, and even surpassed the "Avatar" released at the same time. In 2014, Panama was selected for the Best Foreign Language Film oscar for the first time, and it was also Benaim's documentary "Invasion" about the US invasion of Panama.