Poland & Ecuador make their Oscar picks

by Nathaniel R

Poland won their first Oscar in the Best International Feature Film category for Ida (2014) eight years ago and surely came closer than expected to a second win four years ago with a late surge for the brilliant Cold War (2018) which also picked up Best Director and Best Cinematography nominations. In fact, Poland has had a major comeback with the Oscars in the past 15 years, racking of nearly half of their nomination total after a quarter century drought following the last time the Academy couldn't get enough of their cinema back in the mid seventies to early eighties.  Can they keep their hot streak going with their buzzy donkey point-of-view feature... 

🇵🇱 EO
Poland (12 nominations, 1 win, and zero additional finalists from 54 submissions)

This portrait of modern Europe, through the eyes of a donkey, made a splash at Cannes. It shared the jury prize and won a prize for its score, too. It will next screen at both TIFF and NYFF, followed by a platform theatrical rollout in the US starting with New York on November 18th. Janus Films (who had their biggest sucess ever with last year's winner Drive My Car) is the US distributor. Though the donkey is the main character, Isabelle Huppert appears as a countess! This is the second Oscar submission from the 84 year old director Jerzy Skolimowski. Poland previous selected his film 11 Minutes (2015).

The Polish Film Institute who is tasked with selecting the countrys Oscar submission each year picked EO from a total of 7 finalists, which we previously discussed. You can read a lot more about Poland's history at the Oscars in our 2020 exploration of the topic.

🇪🇨 UNSEEN
Ecuador (no nominations or finalists from 11 submissions) 

Ecuador has submitted the second feature from Javier Andrade (they previously submitted his debut Porcelain Horse, 2012) which is about a depressed woman (actress Anahí Hoeneisen who co-wrote the screenplay) who returns from a psychiatric clinic but continues to unravel. Ecuador has yet to score with Oscar but their cinema has been very low profile. It often takes interest from one of the big five festivals (there hasn't been) or one breakout director to put a country's cinema on the map, internationally speaking. Their highest profile submission was arguably Chronicles (2004) due to its recognizable international cast with Spanish-speaking stars from the US, UK, Spain, and Mexico in the cast. The Longest Night (2019) also had a small international profile with a few festival prizes.

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