Halfway done with the Best International Film list?

by Nathaniel R

Behind the scenes I've been updating the Best International Film submission charts daily. At this writing we have 43 titles, which means we're about halfway done. We still haven't heard which title will represent heavy-hitters like Denmark, France, Italy, Spain, or last year's winner Brazil (though we do have finalists lists for a few of those mainstays of the category). We also impatiently await the decisions from three countries (China, Hong Kong, India) with major cinema industry that voters strangely resist on the regular (sigh). So check out the three charts (A-G / H-N / P-Y) and the current finalist list predictions.  Yes, the other Oscar charts will get an update very soon. We'll start when TIFF announces their People's Choice prize.

Today i wanted to highlight four of the newer submissions that I'm excited to see if I ever get the opportunity...

SLOVAKIA (28 submissions | never nominated or made the finals)

I BEG filmmakers to stop naming their movies Father or Mother. It's like they're asking for trouble or for their film to be hard to find or quickly forgotten since it's so very easy to get it confused with dozens of other films with the exact same title. Consider that this Father's Slovak title is Otec and I've even seen another (great) movie named Otec in the 2020s! So this problem is universal. ANYWAY... This Father made a little splash at Venice where it was quite well reviewed and involves a successful man and loving father who discovers that his child has gone missing from daycare and his wife experienced Forgotten Baby Syndrome. 

NETHERLANDS (58 submissions | 7 noms | +3 additional finalists)

Netherlands chose the unsettling debut film Reedland which has impressed critics at festivals. It's about a reedcutter who discovers a dead girl on his property. He feels ambiguously guilt about it. Netherlands hasn't been nominated in twenty-two years now but they've made the finals a few times since which must be frustrating.

THE TALE OF THE SILYAN

NORTH MACEDONIA (21 submissions | 2 noms) 

Macedonia didn't submit in 2024 but we were huge fans of their 2023 entry Housekeeping for Beginners from TFE fav Goran Stolevski who is three-for-three in his young career (his other terrific movies are the witchy horror film You Are Not Alone and the gay romantic drama Of An Age) . This year they've selected a documentary Tale of the Silyan. While I wouldn't normally be excited about that (I am that heathen that wishes docs didn't compete with narrative features... two different artforms to me!) this film is from one of the two directors of the excellent Oscar nominated Honeyland (also a doc at least in part about a persons relationship to creatures) -- will she have the same kind of magic with this solo outing about an old man and a white bird.

ROMANIA (41 submissions | 1 nom | + 1 additional finalists)

The Romanian New Wave was such a big deal, critically speaking, in the 2000s and early 2010s that it's still upsetting that Oscar never honored it. Now that cinephilia has moved on and Romanian cinema is just one of many cinemas, it'll probably take a great submission pic to get them noticed. I'm highlighting this one, Traffic, not to be confused with the Oscar winning Steven Soderbergh picture from 2000, because it's written by the great Cristian Mungiu (who directed the classic and famously snubbed Palme d'or winner 4 Months 3 Weeks and 2 Days as well as the Oscar finalist Beyond the Hills). The director is a rising Belgian/Romanian filmmaker Teodora Mihai and apparently like the Soderbergh picture which it has no relation to, it has multiple storylines. The topic is Romanians immigrants in other cities. Anamaria Vartolomei, who was just fantastic in the French abortion drama Happening a few years back, headlines (she's French-Romanian, hence the crossover). 

Fun facts about the 43 films announced thus far:

8 of the films are documentaries (Armenia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Czech Republic, Dominican Republic, Ireland, North Macedonia, Ukraine) which suggests we're heading for a record high this season in terms of the overall submission pool

1 film is animated (Latvia)... hey, it worked for them (AND HOW!) just last season.

There are 2 horror films (Cambodia, Ecuador) thus far. Oscar rarely embraces the genre unless the film makes major critical AND popular waves but given how popular the genre is globally, it's good that countries keep trying to widen the Academy's taste.

Comments

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