Will the "Loving Vincent" team return to the Oscars via "The Peasants"?

by Nathaniel R

THE PEASANTS

Do you remember that painted animation film Loving Vincent (2017)? It was billed as the world's first fully painted feature film and it went on to an Oscar nomination in the Best Animated Feature category (eventually losing to Pixar's Coco). The married filmmaking team behind that picture have done it again with The Peasants, which is an adaptation of a novel about a peasant girl who causes a scandal by marrying a rich older man. Only three animated films have ever been nominated for Best International Feature Film -- Waltz With Bashir, Flee, and The Missing Picture (sort of) -- and interestingly enough all three of them can be classified as documentaries in addition to being animated. The same isn't true of The Peasants but Poland is submitting this one for the Oscar race...

If it gets distribution in time it could even be up for two categories with Best Animated Feature also in the mix.

Poland has had a good run at the Oscars these past nine years with four nominations (Ida, Cold War, Corpus Christi, and EO) and their first international win (Ida). If The Peasants is nominated they'll have scored nominations in a full 50% of the races within a 10 year span. 

TOTEM

Two more submissions just announced!

As expected Mexico will submit Lila Avilés' Totem, the story of a seven year old girl at her grandfather's birthday party. This is only the director's second feature but the first, The Chambermaid (2018), won major critical acclaim and the Ariel Award at home in Mexico for Best First Work. It had the misfortune of being a Mexican film about a maid the same year that Roma arrived so it lost the Ariel at home but it did become the Mexican submission for the Oscars the following year (due to different calendars of eligibility).

A LIGHT NEVER GOES OUT

Finally, new to the list is the Hong Kong submission A Light Never Goes Out about a widow (Sylvia Chang) who continues her husband's dream of making neon signs. This is a feature debut from a filmmaker named Anastasia Tsang. 

Comments

[Owl]

I wonder if Poland's move to be represented by Chlopi (The Peasants) at the Oscars actually helps Agnieszhka Holland's Zielona granica (The Green Border) to land other nominations. I was hoping Kobieta z... (Woman Of...) will somehow squeak through, if only to spotlight Malgorzata Hajewska, and especially Joanna Kulig. Probably too much of a longshot.

Excited to see the excellent Sylvia Chang in Dang fo laan saan (A Light Never Goes Out). She won the Golden Horse for her lead performance in this movie.