Poland's Oscar stats and the first 2020 news of the International Feature Race

If you've been reading TFE for any length of time, you already know we're obsessive about Oscar's Foreign Language Film race, last year retitled to Best International Feature Film. Normally we've long since begun talking about the submission list, but 2020 remains an unruly unusual beast. But we do have two pieces of news to share regarding our favourite non-actress based category.

First, we've neglected to mention that Oscar's longer-than-usual release eligibility period has also affected Best International Film...

That's a category that doesn't actually follow the January 1st to December 31st calendar to begin with in a normal year. Films that are submitted to represent a country in this category generally have to be released in that country between October 1st of the previous year to September 30th of the year of Oscar submission. For the 93rd Academy Awards, that period has been extended. The eligibility period will be October 1st, 2019 through December 31st, 2020. 

Even though each country now has three additional months of releases to consider -- so we'll be hearing the official list much later than usual -- one country has already selected.

Poland will be sending Never Gonna Snow Again, a comedy about a masseur who develops a cult following that is premiering at the Venice Film Festival on September 6th. Ukranian British actor Alec Utgoff (Stranger Things, Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation), who generally works in English language cinema, headlines. It's from the female director Malgorzata Szumowska (The Other Lamb, Elles) here co-directing for the first time with her frequent collaborator Michal Englert, who is also the film's co-writer and cinematographer. This is the 5th time Poland has submitted a film directed by a woman to the Oscars. The four previous female-helmed submissions were: Copernicus (1973, co-directed by Ewa Petelska and her husband Czeslaw Petelski), The Welts (2004, Magdalena Piekorz), In Darkness (2011, Agnieszka Holland), and Spoor (2017, Agnieszka Holland). 

Here's the teaser...

POLAND'S OSCAR STATS
Submitting since 1963
52 Total Submissions
12 Nominations
1 Win

Roman Polanski's "Knife in Water" was Poland's first submission and their first nomination

• Knife in the Water (Polanski, 1963)
• Pharaoh (Kawalerowicz, 1966)
• The Deluge (Hoffman, 1974)
• The Promised Land (Wajda, 1975)
• Nights and Days (Antczak, 1976)
• The Maids of Wilko (Wajda, 1979)
• Man of Iron (Wajda, 1981)
• Katyn (Wajda, 2007)
• In Darkness (Holland, 2011)
• Ida (Pawlikowski, 2014) WINNER
• Cold War (Pawlikowski, 2018)
• Corpus Christi (Komasa, 2019)

Most frequently submitted directors

1. Andrzej Wajda (9 submissions, 4 nominated films, Wajda also received an Honorary Oscar)
2. Jerzy Kawalerowicz (3 submissions, 1 nominated film) 
3. Krzysztof Kieślowki (3 submissions, 0 nominated films, Kieślowski was also nominated for Best Director/Screenplay for Three Colors Red, which was not eligible for this category) 
4. Krzysztof Zanussi (3 submissions, 0 nominated films)
5. Pawel Pawlikowski (2 submissions, 2 nominated films, 1 winning film, and Pawlikowski was also nominated for Best Director once)
6. Agnieskza Holland (2 submissions, 1 nominated film)
7. [TIE] Witold Leszczyński, Kazimierz Kutz, Feliks Falk (2 submissions, 0 nominated films) 

Most Oscar-honored Polish artists

Spielberg with his trusted cinematographer Janusz Kaminski

1. Janusz Kamiński, Cinematographer (6 nominations, 2 wins)
2. Roman Polanski, Director (5 nominations across 3 categories, 1 win for Best Director, plus a Foreign Film nomination)
3. [TIE] Anton Grot, Art Director and Rudolph Maté, Cinematographer (5 nominations each) 
4. Bronislaw Kaper, Composer (4 nominations, 1 win)
5. Anna B Sheppard, Costume Designer (3 nominations)
6. [TIE] Lukasz Zal, Cinematographer and Kryzsztof Kieslowki (2 nominations each)
7. Zbigniew Rybczyńsky (1 nomination and win for animated short)
8. Pawel Pawlikowski, Director (1 nomination for Best Director, plus a Best Foreign Film win out of 2 Foreign film nominations)
9. Agnieska Holland, Director (1 nomination for Screenplay, plus two Foreign Film nominations... one from West Germany)

And a special honorary case. Did you know that Samuel Goldwyn, of Old Hollywood production fame, was born in Poland? He produced silent classics like Tonight or Never and Ben-Hur, and later sound classics like Ball of Fire, The Best Years of Our Lives, The Little Foxes, and Wuthering Heights among many more. He received 3 Honorary prizes from the Academy (two Thalbergs and one Jean Hersholt)

Comments

[Pawel]

Thank you for championing foreign (or should I say: international) cinema.
I'm from Poland and loved seeing you look closely at our cinema. We've had a pretty good record, especially in the last decade or so.

[NATHANIEL R]

Pawel -- you definitely have. COLD WAR only gets better with each viewing! and IDA is of course brilliant. I also kind of liked recent submission SPOOR though i get that it wasn't strong enough for a nomination.

if only we could see all of the past nomines somehwere but subtitled features are SO hard to find once they're more than a few years old unless they're from super famous directors.

[ken s]

I just saw Corpus Christi recently on U-Verse. It's a magnificent film, and the first film that made me feel positively towards the Catholic Church in a long, long time. It is every bit the equal of Parasite, and I even think I would have voted for it. Too bad it is caught up in the Academy's black hole rules on Foreign Film nominees - it wasn't commercially released last year, so it wasn't eligible in any other categories; it was nominated last year so it's therefore ineligible this year - because the performance by the lead actor, Bartosz Bielenia, is sensational, and truly award worthy.

[Baby Clyde]

I just randomly went to see Corpus Christi at TIFF last year. Knew absolutely nothing about it beforehand but thought it was great. Much preferred it to Parasite (Which was my 5th ranked of the 5 FL nominees). Much preferred Cold War to Roma as well so my recent Foreign Language taste's have not matched the Academy's much.

[Marsha Mason]

Apparently, Corpus Christi will begin streaming sometime in September. Can't wait to see it.

[TheDrMistery]

Fellow Pole, here. Thank you for this article! Pola Negri was Polish as well but I know she was never nominated.

I think the best Polish films submitted for Best Foreign Language Film were actually included, especially 1970s classics. I just wish at least one of them won back then. My only regret is that not one of 3 submissions of Krzysztof Kieslowski was nominated. He deserved it.

I was afraid "Corpus Christi" will be among 5 pre-qualifiers snubbed (that must suck) so it was a very welcome surprise to see it announced.

"Never Gonna Snow Again" has also A-list of Polish actors: Agata Kulesza (Ida, Cold War), Maja Ostaszewska (Katyn, Body), Andrzej Chyra (Katyn, In the Name Of), Katarzyna Figura (Pret-a-Porter, Kiler) and Weronika Rosati (True Detective, Luck).

[Raul]

Alec Utgoff is adorable. He was also in "San Andreas" with the Rock, which shows how big a fan I am. =)

[yokobama]

Alec Utgoff played Alexei Smirnoff in Stranger Thing? !Oh my God! I didn't recognize you!

[par]

"...our favourite non-actress based category"

oh great, now costume design is crying in the corner

[Ryan T.]

I saw COLD WAR this year pre-COVID and CORPUS CHRISTI just a few days ago. Both are VERY VERY good films.

I pretty much agree with what @ken s above said except the whole voting for it over PARASITE. But it would've been close! I also loved PAIN & GLORY!

[Peggy Sue]

So we're not getting the bulk of submissions until January?

[NATHANIEL R]

par -- lol. okay it a tie.

peggy sue -- i imagine before then because the deadline was usually oct 1st and we would get more than half the list a month before that.

[TheDrMistery]

Krzysztof Zanussi is second most submitted director after Wajda with 4 (1971, 1977, 1996, 2000) so he's 0:4. His "Rok niespokojnego słońca" was nominated for Golden Globe, though.

Polish composer Jan A. P. Kaczmarek has the same Oscar record as Zbigniew Rybczyński - 1 win out of 1 nomination. He won Best Original Score for "Finding Neverland".

[TheDrMistery]

Oh, and there was also Dorota Kędzierzawska among submitted female director - in 1996 for "Crows".

[TheDrMistery]

^^Sorry - directors and in 1995.

[jules]

Corpus Christi will be on Criterion Channel in September! I'm very excited to see it.

[Luis]

Disappointed they're not sending "Hater", also by Jan Komasa... sigh

[Domenico]

I still have 35 to go but there is hardly a clunker amongst them. Be it the it couldn’t be done here like Amarcord or the American films in a foreign language like The Secret in Their Eyes and Character. As to Ida—that window scene is one for the ages. Let the trolls troll; the real comments are worth the irritation.