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The Academy will announce its 15 finalists for the Best International Feature Oscar next Tuesday. For the first time in years, the shortlist will not include any saves from the executive committee, meaning that some more challenging pieces might suffer for it. In any case, as that day approaches, our joint adventure through the submissions continues. However, since time is short, I've decided to focus these last few groups of capsule reviews on pictures that enchanted me, the kind of titles I'd be ecstatic to see on the shortlist. Without further ado, let's delve into Slovenia's meditation on memory, Sweden's tale of chaotic motherhood, and Ukraine's sci-fi dystopia…
STORIES FROM THE CHESTNUT WOODS (Slovenia)
Between Italy and Yugoslavia, there's a land full of chestnut trees, forests as far as the eye can see. This natural frontier is Slovenia and, during World War II, its strategic position spelled doom for the nation. The winds of war made it a liminal space, ravaged, and transformed into a limbo-like threshold for the Iron Curtain, where only lost souls remained. Misery spread like a disease, solitude too, and hunger soon followed. Director Gregor Bozic stares in the face of this despondence through a prism of poetic abstraction, unspooling a song of longing from the people who stayed in those forests, who died there, or eventually left. The story is stark in its simplicity, a casual encounter between an old carpenter caring for his dying wife and a young widowed chestnut seller. Their meeting happens at a time of transition in their lives, a period of reflection and reckoning with memory, regrets, and dreams that have long withered away and floated off on a chilly breeze. It's their ruminations that inform the look of the film, its pensive mood, and beautiful phantasmagoria. Memories bleed into present life, oneiric reveries rise from the earth with promises of pain and joy, whispers of doubt, moans of loss. For some, Stories from the Chestnut Woods may be too shapeless and meandering, but I felt hypnotized by its bittersweet visions. Ferran Paredes' autumnal cinematography in 35mm deserves particular praise for how it transfigures the arboreal landscape, painting with natural light and a hazy sense of arcane artifice. You'll be hard-pressed to find a more gorgeous or delicate portrait of bereavement, of national trauma, and the peacefulness of mortality. B+
CHARTER (Sweden)
Ambiguity can be both a tool for cinematic brilliance or the cause of an audience's rightful frustration. In her latest film, director Amanda Kernell makes good use of ambivalence on film, telling the story of a reckless single mom who kidnaps her children from her ex-husband's house and takes them on an impromptu holiday to Tenerife. The protagonist's frenzy was ignited by a teary phone call from her young son, but neither she nor we get much in the way of context clues to decipher what's going on. Paranoia takes over, the fear of a trapped animal, the despair of an absent matriarch in need of filial validation. Ana Dahl Torp's mercurial central performance illustrates these paradigms with clarity, though it's in the assemblage and presentation of her troublesome tale that Charter shines brightest. Even though most of the film concerns three people in close proximity, Kernell frames the diminutive cast in isolated compositions. Because of this, each touch shared by mother and children, each gesture that brings people together into the same frame, feels electric, transgressive. As for the expanses of empty space encircling the actors in most shots, it weighs down on the viewer like a wave of molten led, blistering and suffocating. That's not to say that Charter is a monotonous experience, far from it. The scarcity of information, the unreliability of the dominating POV, the fiery nature of the emotions, all contribute to a psychologically complex film that feels genuinely dangerous as it tackles the thin line that often stands between love and destruction. B+
ATLANTIS (Ukraine)
Be warned, Atlantis isn't a film for everyone. Glacially slow, Valentyn Vasyanovych's latest feature is a saturnine collection of mostly static longshots. Those distant, almost alienating visions, document the hellish aftermath of a great Russian war that ravaged Ukraine as we follow a PTSD-stricken man who crosses paths with a young volunteer working on identifying the mummified corpses littered through the apocalyptic vistas. To say that it's a challenging, depressing production feels like an understatement. Curiously enough, it's also an inaccurate overstatement. Despite the bleakness of the premise and the rigidity of his formal approach, Vasyanovych isn't interested in creating a mere compendium of horrors. His camera may be merciless, but his directorial hand is not, nor his storytelling choices. While the world of Atlantis may be a nightmare, there are inklings of levity hiding beneath the superficial layers of despair. Dig deep enough, be patient, and you'll find humor unspooling from the gallows-like atmosphere. The simple pleasure of a hot bath emerges from a tableau of industrial wreckage to great surprise, while lust blossoms like blinding sunlight thawing the frozen ennui of the land and its people. Even in a crumbling world where optimism seems impossible, where human warmth appears to be an inaccessible privilege, there's still hope. Bookending his picture in thermal vision, the director slyly subverts the emotions unspooled by those storms of saturated color. First, the overhead shots philtered through that technology invoked the perspective of an unfeeling mechanized deity. By the end, however, the glow of comforting bodies and the lower angle suggest a less fatalistic interpretation. People may be the fountain from which evil springs forth, but they're also all we have. Human connection shall be the light at the end of the tunnel, our salvation. A-
I'd love it if these three pictures made it to the Academy shortlist. Unfortunately, that seems unlikely. Atlantis is far too cold and alienating, its style so bracing it feels like an open challenge to AMPAS' perceived taste in conventional prestige. Stories from the Chestnut Woods also feels too abstract, but its World War II adjacent "story" might help. Charter is the likeliest to be recognized, both because it comes from one of the most honored nationalities in the category's history but also for its character-focused drama. If it were an American production with American actors and English dialogue, it'd the kind of film one can imagine earning its lead actress considerable award