"Flee", "Worst Person...", and more join the Best International Feature Film Oscar competition
Monday, October 25, 2021 at 2:22PM by Nathaniel R
It's official. Finally. Two truly excellent Scandinavian films are joining the Oscar competition. Norway's Cannes sensation Worst Person in the World, a romantic dramedy from the great Joachim Trier (Reprise, Oslo August 31st, Thelma), and the animated documentary Flee about a gay Afghan refugee who made his home in Denmark are now officially in the hunt for Oscar glory. The Best International Feature Film category is always hugely competitive and the voting system is complex so there are never any "locks" but both films have a headstart at making the 15 wide finalist list; they're already widely seen and wildly acclaimed from their multiple festival outings. Flee will actually be gunning for multiple nominations as it could theoretically compete for the two other specialty feature categories: Documentary and Animated Feature.
Norway and Denmark aren't the only countries to announce over the past few days. After the jump twelve other Oscar hopefuls from around the Globe...
ARGENTINA
Argentina has chosen Natalie Meta's The Intruder as their Oscar hopeful. It's the story of a woman (Wild Tales' Erica Rivas) who begins to confuse reality and imagination after a traumatic event. It played in competition at Berlin. Argentina has been nominated once per decade since the 1970s with the exception of two in the 1980s.
AUSTRALIA
Australia has selected When Pomenegranates Howl as their representative film. It's about a kid who wants to become a movie star. It's a coproduction with Aghanistan, a country that has been submitting to the Oscars since 2002 though sporadically. The film is in Pashto and Persian.
BANGLADESH
Bangladesh, which has yet to be nominated, is sending Rehana which played in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes this summer. It's about a professor who witnesses a sexual assault; she knows both the victim and the perpetator.
BOSNIA & HERZEGOVINA
Bosnia, fresh off their second nomination last season for Quo Vadis Aida, will send the romantic drama The White Fortress by Igor Drljaca. It's about two teenagers in post-war Sarajevo.
COSTA RICA
They will send Clara Solo. Trivia note: This film was also a finalist for Sweden. Given that borders are ever shrinking when it comes to cinema and multinational productions are the norm, we're anxiously awaiting the chaos when two countries submit the same film (you know it's coming in the next ten years). What will Oscar do? Will they take sides and try to tell one country that it isn't that country enough... or will they have to give two Oscars, one per country, if said film wins?
HONG KONG
Hong Kong will send Jimmy Wan's Zero to Hero, a sports biopic of a gold medal winning paralympian.
INDIA
Just a couple days after we heard some of the finalists India has already selected their contender. It's going to be the Tamil language film Pebbles. It's about an alcoholic trying to get his wife back after he beats her with his young son in tow.
KENYA
They will be sending Mission to Rescue but unfortunately it doesn't have an IMDb or Letterbox page yet so we know virtually nothing about it though it looks like a war film.
LUXEMBOURG
They are sending the drama Lo Sto Bene by Donato Rotunno. It's about an old Italian man who has lived most of his life away from Italy and a young Italian woman and artist he meets abroad.
MONTENEGRO
They will send Ivan Bakrac's After the Winter about lifelong friends, now scattered across former Yugoslavia, who are trying to leave their youthful ways behind them.
PARAGUAY
Paraguay has selected the documentary Nothing but the Sun which features Mateo Sobode Chiqueno and his tape recordings of the Ayoreo people.
URUGUAY
They'll be sending The Broken Glass Theory a comedy about an insurance company employee visiting a small town where numerous cars are set on fire.
more articles on this category | the submission charts (freshly updated) | Oscar predictions (freshly updated) | Letterboxd list (you guessed it... freshly updated)
Reader Comments (6)
Film Twitter really wants Flee to be nominated in like five different categories. Where do you stand on this? Are you a pick a lane kind of guy? (I am)
Peggy Sue -- i am. but people *hate* that i dont think documentaries should be able to compete for international feature or best picture ;) documentary has its own category! WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD is a better film anyway (but that said they're both great and they'd make a lovely Scandinavian set in the shortlist this year).
I'm a little surprised that Joachim Trier seems to having this moment. I dont actually think TWPITW is better than Reprise or Oslo... and am a little thrown.
But I found Flee very moving.
A bit longer comment this time... Hopefully it's allowed ::)
Have seen 25 of those films that have been sent to the oscars by foreign countries so far.
Here's my top:
1. Estonia - On the water (Last year I called Hong Kong and Tunesia as I really liked them both and kept on praising them... and they ended up nominated... this time I hope this one will do the trick. Very sweet coming of age tale about a teenage boy in a small town with all sorts of weird grownups aroung him...and the love interest also. Funny and warm film based on a novel :))
2. Finland - Compartment No. 6 (screenplay did win Cannes best screenplay prize and this "roadmovie" really is very well writter with romcom and LGBT theme and russian roulette of a trainride, where the protagonist never really knows who steps into her life... and the ending is just perfect! Not like a Hollywood film though and this is what makes it specially cool. Based on a novel also.)
3. Germany - I'm your man (I guess my favorite female lead on this long list and the story with the AI and the personification that we all tend to do to the things around us... it puzzles the brains, but the film just works on so many levels.)
4. Sweden - Tigers (what happens with the kids, that get into the high levvel sports at the earlier and earlier age in out world... a true life story, that makes it even more real)
5. Norway - Worst person in the world (best actress at Cannes... if only the whole movie was such a delight as the first half... all that illness dragged it down and made it more generic to the genre as a whole... but the first half is maybe the best of this whole list! Strong script.)
6. Denmark - Flee (not a fan of the way it is drawn, but overall it is somewhat special. Not a big a fan, but I do understand the reasoning if this gets into TOP15)
7. Japan - Drive my car (what a screenplay! 3 hours, but does not feel that long... partly also about acting, so filmmakers voting, I guess will stand behind this movie. And it really was engaging.)
5 north European countries+Germany in the mix, it's never gonna happen, I know... but a boy can dream can't he :)
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The next are not really up to the TOP15 standard, so I guess (at least) the rest of the 8 should come from those, that I haven't seen yet... although I have also a hunch, that Kosovo might be this year's Bosnia and maybe I wouldn't rule out Slovakia fully just yet either)
8. Austria - Great freedom
9. Romania - Bad luck banging or Loony porn (way too weird with the long porn bit in the beginning and the Romanian alphabet and the parents' meeting at the end, weird, weird movie)
10. Iceland - Lamb (a horror flick, that's also the kind that you can't help but laugh... i had a better ending in mind, that's why I didn't like it as much as I could have, but that's just personal. Another weirdo of a film on the list)
11. Slovakia - 107 mothers (felt like documentary, but it's not)
12. Belgium - Playground/Un monde (simple, but strong though. maybe too much done before, but then again, I did like it)
13. Indonesia - Yuni
14. Kosovo - Hive (I wasn't so big on last year's Bosnian film, so I maybe am not the right person to fully predics this film's chances. For me it was ok, but not that interesting... maybe I just don't know the tragic life of that corder of the world that well... which makes me belive, that this film will get at least into the 15)
15. Malta - Luzzu (just an average movie, although the protagonist is not a real actor, but he shure can act)
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16. Serbia - Oasis
17. Netherlands - Do not hesitate
18. Costa Rica - Clara Sola
19. Georgia - Brighton 4th
20. Somalia - Gravedigger's wife
21. France - Titane (way tooooo weird!)
22. Slovenia - Sanremo
23. Hungary - Post mortem (just a period horror film, with no particular substance)
24. Cambodia - White building
25. Armenia - Should the wind drop
I just have to add, that my guess (read: high hopes) for those 8 added to the 7 I liked so far are:
Colombia - Memoria
Czech - Zatopec
India - Pebbles
Iran - A hero
Italy - Hand of god
Poland - Leave no traces
South Korea - Escape from Mogadishu
Spain - Good boss
and maybe also: Israel - Let it be morning + I guess about 10-20 more will be announced, that we don't know yet...
The Worst Person in the World is wondrous. I love Titane, but The Worst Person in the World is my favorite of the Oscar-eligible international films that I've seen.