Oscar's International Race Pt 3a - Movie Trailers (A-K)

The Academy has announced the official submission list for the 92nd Academy Awards in the Best International Feature Film category (renamed from Best Foreign-Language Film). This year we have 93 films competing.

As is our practice, we're sharing all the trailers (that could be found) having already shared stats and introduced you to the growing ranks of female directors. We'll be tweaking the Oscar charts periodically but they're mostly complete now. Cinema is a global artform and that's why we invest so much time in this. This is only the first 40+ trailers (L through Z countries still to come) but it should keep your eyes busy for awhile...

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How had I never seen... "Cabaret"?

In this new series, members of Team Film Experience watch and share their reactions to classic films they’ve never seen. 

By Ben Miller

Cabaret is Bob Fosse’s “musical” into the world of bohemian performer Sally Bowles and uptight Brit Brian Roberts.  Both try to navigate the world of love along with the struggle to reach a level of extravagance, all the while experiencing the adapting political climate of 1930’s Berlin.

Shamefully, I had never seen it.

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Oscar's International Race - Pt 2: Random Stats and Key Trivia

Now that we have the whole list of 93 films vying for the Oscar for Best International Feature Film, it's time for a collection of trivia regarding this particular vintage...

LONGEST FILM
The Painted Bird (Czech Republic) is just 11 minutes shy of three hours. Lots of films are that long but given that this movie has been referred to as 'the child rape Holocaust movie' three hours sounds utterly punishing. Naturally then, it's split audiences between 'masterpiece' and 'unwatchable' camps. Runners up: Domain (Portugal) and Truth or Justice (Estonia) are just a little bit shorter, both about two hours and 45 minutes long.

SHORTEST FILM
Poisonous Roses (Egypt) is just 70 minutes long. It's reportedly a mood piece about life in lower-class Cairo that primarily focuses on the relationship of a sister and brother. Runners up: The light documentary When Tomatoes Met Wagner (Greece) is just two minutes longer than that one. Belgium's Our Mothers, Belarus's Debut, Lithuania's Bridges of Time, Albania's The Delegation, and Montenegro's Neverending Past are the other really short titles, all clocking in at 80 minutes or less.

Movie stars, languages, and gayness are after the jump...

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Horror Actressing: Maribel Verdú in "Pan's Labyrinth"

by Jason Adams

As long as there have been haunted houses there have been housekeepers keeping them, and the role of the housekeeper in a horror film is a tried and true one that film-makers can and have spun off a dozen different ways. There's the strange and sapphic Mrs. Danvers (Judith Anderson) in Rebecca; there's the seemingly good-natured but with a hell of a secret Mrs. Mills (Fionnula Flanagan) in The Others; and there's the bluntly unfriendly type typified by Mrs. Dudley (Rosalie Crutchley) in The Haunting who gets to speak the immortal line, "In the night. In the dark."

Guillermo Del Toro, would of course be familiar with all these tropes, which is why I think his spin on the role with the great Maribel Verdú in Pan's Labyrinth is so fascinating...

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Oscar's International Race Pt 1 - The Female Directors

The Academy has officially announced list of 93 contenders -- an all time record --  for this year's Best International Feature Film Oscar (submission chart here). So let's dive in! 

Last year's sole female nominee for Best International Feature, Nadine Labaki (Capernaum) is in front of the camera this time for Lebanon's new submission "1982"

by Nathaniel R

We've been tracking the just renamed foreign-language film race for so long that we love to dig in to stats a bit. You may recall that last year 20 of the 87 pictures were directed or co-directed by women. This year 28 of the 93 contenders are -- that's 30% of the list which is easily an all-time record! Here's another promising note for the future in regards to gender parity: female directors made only 2 of the nominated foreign-language films in the first quarter century of this category but things opened in the 1980s with four nominees from female directors, there were four again in the 1990s, and then seven in the 2000s. Though the 2010s have only seen five thus far, the trend is still promising; in the past four consecutive years one of the nominees has come from a female auteur:

2015 Mustang (France) by Deniz Gamze Ergüven
2016 Toni Erdmann (Germany) by Maren Ade
2017 On Body and Soul (Hungary) by Idilko Enyedi
2018 Capernaum (Lebanon) by Nadine Labaki

Will the trend continue this year? Here are the 29 women who will be trying to make that happen.

The 29 Women Competing in the Best International Feature Race
* means they co-directed their film

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