by Nathaniel R
"The Wound" from South Africa might be the biggest surprise on the finalist list.The Academy's foreign film nominating committees have whittled down the 92 contenders to 9. If you've forgotten or never heard the procedure it involves multiple volunteers watching a certain number of entries to be eliglble to vote on them. The top six films advance from those ballots and the executive committee chooses another three which makes the 9 finalists. Then a final committee watches the nine finalists and votes to determine the five nominations. We correctly predicted 7 of the 9 finalist (you can peak here though we'll be updating that chart to reflect the official standings shortly)
A Fantastic Woman directed by Sebastián Lelio for Chile
In the Fade directed by Fatih Akin for Germany
On Body and Soul Ildikó Enyedi for Hungary
Foxtrot directed by Samuel Maoz for Israel
The Insult directed by Ziad Doueiri for Lebanon
Loveless directed by Andrey Zvyagintsev for Russia
Félicité directed by Alain Gomis for Senegal
The Wound directed by John Trengove for South Africa
The Square directed by Ruben Östlund for Sweden MORE AFTER THE JUMP...
The executive committee is there for oversight, essentially, in case the volunteer committees ignore really obviously brilliant films (as they have in the past - remember that 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 days fiasco?). The catch is that we never know which 3 films the executive committee opted to "save" -- this sounds like a really high-brow reality TV show, doesn't it. I'd watch!
the finalists with a half dozen others we thought had a shot at the finals
Normally I'd speculate but I haven't the foggiest which films they saved this year because all of these films have been quite popular in their own ways (at festivals or with critics) and none seem outwardly "difficult" from descriptions or audience response to date. The lowest profile films are surely the two African films and it's a welcome shock that TWO African films are finalists since Oscar is notoriously Euro-centric in this category. They're most grossly negligent in recognizing Asian cinema (unlike African countries, Asian countries generally submit every single year) but that didn't change this year. They also haven't been super psyched about LGBT cinema over the years so its a pleasant surprise to have two such films this year: The Wound and A Fantastic Woman though sadly France's BPM didnt make it three.
Even with the relatively new multiple committee and executive oversight procedure (which has yielded much better nominees -- dont believe anyone who tells you otherwise as they clearly haven't followed/studied the category) some tremendous movies always slip through the cracks. This year we must mourn the loss of France's riveting AIDS activism drama BPM (Beats Per Minute) and Norway's supernatural/LGBT/psychological drama Thema. They're two of the best films of the year in any language. I also really liked the Czech entry Ice Mother about a grandmother who suddenly takes up an unusual hobby to the horror of her awful adult children, and the spiky Polish film Spoor from Agniezka Holland (Europa Europa, In Darkness) about an elderly animal-loving woman who becomes embroiled in a murder mystery. Other high profile entries which did not make the finals include Cambodia's First They Killed My Father, directed by Angelina Jolie and available on Netflix (and just Golden Globe nominated for Foreign Film), Spain's seemingly very well liked Summer 1993, and Austria's Happy End from a previous winner of this category, Michael Haneke (Amour).
I regret to inform that I've been remiss in my screening duties this year in this category (I usually do better) and have seen only three of the nine finalist to date but loved each of them: A Fantastic Woman, On Body and Soul, and Loveless. I can't yet say that I hope they're nominated since I haven't seen their competition but I'd be very surprised if they don't deserve to be given their individual strengths. As for the others, The Square has been nabbing many a critics prize and our own Murtada enthusiastically vouched for Félicité here and here.