Intl' Oscar Updates: Austria, Ireland, Thailand, Etc...

by Nathaniel R

It's your weekly Monday dose of Oscar news, subtitled division. Our official submission list is now 9 pictures long, 6 of which we've already discussed in previous posts. In regards to the "already featured" we now know that Germany decided among their finalists and went with Cannes hit Sound of Falling (reviewed by Elisa). We've also taken this opportunity to update the submission charts so they're now in full swing:

• Chart 1 Afghanistan to Guatemala -4 submissions and 2 in-process decisions
• Chart 2 Haiti to Nortway  -1 submission and 3 in-process decisions
• Chart 3 Palestine to Yemen -4 submissions and 4 in-process decisions
• Predictions - top 20 possibilities (official & otherwise)

 After the jump the latest official submissions and more conjecture...

AUSTRIA
(49 submissions | 4 nominations | 2 wins | + 2 finalists)
Austria seems to vacillate between very competitive or no-chance-in-hell. This year they've selected Peacock by first-time feature director Bernhard Wenger. The film stars Albrecht Schuch who was so fantastic in Oscar winner All Quiet on the Western Front a few years back, receiving a Best Supporting Actor nomination from BAFTA and in my own awards. For this film he plays a man who is hired out to be multiple things for clients...  but who is he really? Schuch won the Austrian Best Actor Award for this. 

IRELAND
(12 submissions | 1 nomination | + 2 finalists)
Ireland has only been submitting intermittently since 2007 so they're doing well so far, with the amazing Quiet Girl as a nominee and two strong finalists in Viva and Kneecap, which show quite a breadth of cinematic styles and subject matters. This year they've selected a documentary called Sanatorium  that's about Ukrainian patients at a former Soviet medical center.

THAILAND
(32 submissions | 0 nominations | + 1 finalist)

USEFUL GHOST

Thailand got the closest they've presumably ever come last season with the charming How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies which made the finals. This year they're sending the delightful sounding dark comedy by first-time director Rachat Boonbunchachoke called  A Useful Ghost. The film is about a dead woman's spirit possessing a vacuum cleaner (!!!) to protect her husband. It's the first film to ever win the Grand Prix Critics Week at Cannes and we're extremely excited to see it. There's been much made in the media about Oscar's expanded taste this past decade but they'd probably have to stretch further still to embrace Thai genre films. (P.S. Usually Thailand releases a list of finalists for the submission honor but they apparently skipped that this year) 

And a little bit of news on recently revealed "finalist" lists...

ARMENIA
Their submission will be chosen from these three pictures

• After Dreaming by Christine Haroutounian which follows a soldier guiding a young woman through war-torn Armenian landcapes.
• My Armenian Phantoms by Tamara Stepanyan is a documentary about Armenian cinema.
• There Was, There Was Not by Emily Mkrtichian a documentary about four women in the aftermath of war.

DENMARK
They've been on a hot streak for the past 25 years, so Oscar fans would be wise to seek out their submission whichever of their three finalists it proves to be. Two are star vehicles and one is a timely documentary.

Mads Mikkelsen & Nikolaj Lie Kaas in THE LAST VIKING

The great Trine Dyrholm (The Girl With the Needle, Commune, In a Better World) stars in Beginnings by Jeanette Nordahl about a couple in mid-divorce when the wife suffers a stroke. Another possibility is The Last Viking a dark comedy by Anders Thomas Jensen starring Mads Mikkelsen (Another Round, A Royal Affair) as a bankrobber released from prison. Another familiar Danish star Nikolaj Lie Kaas (Brothers, The Idiots, Dept Q) plays his brother. Their final contender is a documentary Mr Nobody Against Putin from David Borenstein and Pavel Talankin about a Ukrainian teacher whose school becomes a recruitment center for the war.

We recently discussed Gael Garcia Bernal being a major star in this particular category. Dyrholm and Mikkelsen can claim that distinction, too.

International submissions starring Trine Dyrholm

• The Celebration (1998) - famously snubbed
• In a Better World (2010) - WINNER
• A Royal Affair (2012) - NOMINEE
• Queen of Hearts (2019) 
• The Girl With the Needle (2024) - NOMINEE

International submissions starring Mads Mikkelsen 

• Open Hearts (2002) 
• Adam's Apple (2005)
• After the Wedding (2006) - NOMINEE
• A Royal Affair (2012) - NOMINEE
• The Hunt (2013) - NOMINEE
• Another Round (2020) - WINNER
• The Promised Land (2023)  - Finalist

If Beginnings is submitted and nominated Trine Dyrholm will join Mads Mikkelsen in the top ten of actors who have appeared in the most films nominated for Best International Feature. (Only 9 actors, including Mikkelsen, have starred in four or more nominees in the International category)

NORWAY
As expected the battle for the Norsk submission this year will rage between Berlinale Golden Bear winner Dreams (Sex Love) from Dag Johan Haugerud (reviewed at Berlin) and Cannes Grand Prix winner Sentimental Value from Joachim Trier (reviewed at Cannes). Trier has been submitted thrice previously with Reprise, Thelma, and Worst Person in the World, landing a nomination on the third try. It's such a pity that these two films had to be eligible in the same year since Trier is Norway's long-time best director (and a personal proselytizing passion of yours truly since his very first film in 2006) and Haugerud is, for my money, the most exciting Norwegian filmmaker to emerge since Trier with that one-two-three punch of his own Oslo trilogy: Love, Sex, Dreams! The third finalist is the documentary Stoltenberg -Facing War by Tommy Gulliksen.

DREAMS (SEX LOVE)

While Scandinavian neighbors Denmark and Sweden have won multiple times, Norway has yet to take Oscar gold. We suspect the closest they came was with their most recent nominee Worst Person in the World (2021) which really felt like a potential winner until Japan's Drive My Car took off with critics and arthouse audiences. But who knows. Maybe way back in 1957 Nine Lives was competitive because it's quite good! 

PERU
They are deciding between six films, none of which we know much about...

• Ashes, the Movie by Antonio Rodríguez Romaní
• Mistura by Ricardo de Montreuil. 
• Motherland by Marco Panatonic
• Nanito by Guillermo Fernández Cano
• Quadrilateral by Daniel Rodríguez Risco
• Zafari by Mariana Rondón

Of these filmmakers we're only familiar with Mariana Rondón who was submitted by Venezuela for Postcards from Leningrad in 2007.

PORTUGAL
Portugal will pull their submission from these five pictures:

• Banzo by Margarida Cardoso is set in 1907 and follows a plantation physician struggling to help enslaved people.
• Dreaming of Lions by Paolo Marinou-Blanco is a dark comedy about euthanasia
• The Englishman's Papers by Sérgio Graciano is a drama about a man searching for his father's papers in the Namibian desert.
• Hanami by Denise Fernandes is a fantastical drama about a feverish girl on a volcanic isle.
• The Survivors by José Barahona is a 19th century drama about the survivors of a slave ship crash in the Atlantic Ocean.

None of these filmmakers have been submitted before. We'll wait for Cláudio to fill us in on the quality of their impending selection from his home country!

OSCAR PREDICTION INDEX

• International Predictions
• Chart 1 Afghanistan to Guatemala -4 submissions and 2 in-process decisions
• Chart 2 Haiti to Nortway  -1 submission and 3 in-process decisions
• Chart 3 Palestine to Yemen -4 submissions and 4 in-process decisions