by Nathaniel R
possible submissions from Japan & Norway
Counterintuitively, we begin this year's April Foolish Predictions (two months late --- woot!) with a category for which we currently have no proof of eligibility for. No country that competes in Oscar's annual Best International Feature Film category has (yet) announced their submission. But we do know, from past experiences, that many of the submissions each year will have premiered at film festivals ranging from last fall in 2024 through the fall of 2025. So we looked at recent editions of Sundance, Berlinale, and Cannes for clues. This is great fun to do as anything is possible this early; you don't even need a US distributor to compete (though of course it doesn't hurt)...
My hopes this early are primarily pinned on Joachim Trier's Sentimental Value which was a strong contender for the Palme d"or but settled for second place. I have a good feeling that it's going to become a crossover Oscar player. Wishful thinking kanskje but can you blame me? I've been rooting for Joachim Trier since his very first feature, the wonderfully engaging Reprise bowled us over back in 2006. It had the kind of raw endearingly cinematic verve rarely felt outside of debut features. Oscar ignored it when Norway submitted it (despite a successful US arthouse run). Though it absolutely deserved a nomination, it was a competitive year with Pan's Labyrinth, Canada's Hindi-language Water, and Germany's The Lives of Others sucking up most of the conversational oxygen. Norway skipped Trier come submission time for his incredible follow up Oslo August 31, and his third feature Louder Than Bombs (his only English language film) didn't make much of an impression on international cinephilia. His fourth feature Thelma (2017) was his most atypical -- a supernatural religious-trauma themed lesbian drama! -- but Norway submitted it for the Oscar race anyway. After a single documentary feature, the Norsk auteur delivered his fifth narrative feature, The Worst Person in the World, an instant classic and global success. If Japan's Drive My Car (2021) hadn't had such a seismic impact with critics and Oscar voters, it's easy to imagine that Trier would have delivered Norway its first Oscar win in Best International Feature. Will his fourth time up for the prize (if Norway submits it) be the one?
Apart from Sentimental Value, there are numerous other titles that have already collected fans at festivals, though that doesn't necessarily mean they'll end up as Oscar submission. Iran is a perfect example of this. Jafar Pahani's It Was Just an Accident and the best actress winning film Mother and Child, would be unlikely submissions given the government's oppression of the filmmaker in question or interference with the film, respectively, as they reach international audiences. One of the reasons the category is so fascinating is that there are intricate political and aesthetic issues in the selection process for just about any country, whether that's in the classic sense of "Politics!" (i.e. government control) or politics in the soft-sense among less-controlled groups tasked with choosing a film to represent the country. Anyway we could talk about this all day, so back to the possibilities for the 98th annual Academy Awards...
On the first chart you'll see ideas on 15 possible submissions that we think could be competitive. More will emerge in the fall festivals and actual official submissions will begin rolling in later this summer. Two Asian films that I'm keeping an eye on (because they sound interesting) are Kokuho from Korean-Japanese filmmaker Lee Sang-il (trailer above) which involves gangsters and kabuki actors and is headlined by Ryô Yoshizawa and Oscar nominee Ken Watanabe. The other is the forthcoming thriller from South Korea's excellent auteur Park Chan-Wook called No Other Way which stars Lee Byung Hun (Joint Security Area, Terminator Genisys, Squid Game s2, and many more...) as a desperate unemployed man trying to get rid of his competition for a job.
first image from NO OTHER CHOICE
Give the chart a look and let us know which films you're excited about!