Awards Season (and TFE) Calendar - The Final Stretch

It's the final month+ of awards mania and we'll have final Oscar nom predictions up shortly. But what a busy weekend it already is... 

Globe Drama winner / Oscar hopeful 1917 just expanded into wide release, France's Oscar finalist Les Miserables opened in limited release (banking on a nomination Monday, no doubt). For home viewing Best Picture hopeful Joker and Oscar longshot-in-a-couple-of-categories The Lighthouse both just hit Blu-Ray. New to streaming is the Florence Pugh showcase horror film MidSommar on Amazon Prime, while action spectacle John Wick Parabellum (mysteriously not nominatd for stunts at SAG) arrives on HBO. But here's what's still to come this season... 

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International Contenders: Estonia's "Truth and Justice"

by Abe Fried-Tanzer

When someone is young, the future can be full of hope. There is endless time to truly build something, and, if it’s difficult to get a dream off the ground right away, there may be other opportunities and options down the road. Working toward a goal, however, requires some sort of anchoring to the present so that a person doesn’t become too bogged down in the lack of progress and isn’t ever able to appreciate what it is they have on the way there. If eyes are only on the future, those who have spent every moment working may feel as if they’ve missed their entire lives once they actually stop to take it all in.

In Truth or Justice, Estonia’s finalist for Best International Feature this year, Andres (Priit Loog) buys a large farm and moves there with his wife Krõõt (Maiken Schmidt). He soon meets his neighbor Pearu (Priit Võigemast), an alcoholic who has already driven away two previous owners with his dishonest tactics...

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30 days till Oscar

Which actor turning 30 in 2020 will be the first to win an Oscar? (Or in the case of Jennifer Lawrence win a second Oscar). Here's a list of key working actors of the moment (with their current Oscar stats). If they've appeared in a film nominated for Best Picture (or expected to be Monday) that film is mentioned after their name...

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Who'll be this years' surprise snub?

by Cláudio Alves

Nathaniel's final predictions will be up tomorrow morning but until then, let's talk potential snubs. Oscar nomination morning usually holds a few surprises. Sometimes, everything goes according to plan and the performers singled out by the precursors appear in their entirety but that's a rare event. We're thankful for that since the opposite would be dreadfully boring. Usually, there's one big snub like Timothée Chalamet for Beautiful Boy, Amy Adams for Arrival, Idris Elba for Beasts of No Nation, Jennifer Anniston for Cake or Tom Hanks for Captain Phillips. At the last minute, they all failed to secure an expected nod.

Of this year's crop of contenders, 12 have conquered nods from the Golden Globes, BAFTAs, SAGs, and Critics Choice Awards. Many pundits say DiCaprio is the most vulnerable and we should never be sure about Hanks given his recent Oscar history. Still, the rest of them seem solid if not altogether locked. Unless, of course, Margot Robbie manages to upset everyone and get in for the Tarantino flick instead of Bombshell. You can never know for sure, that's the eternal truth about prognosticating. 

All that said, here are those 12 contenders...

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Interview: Ladj Ly on 'Les Miserables'

by Murtada Elfadl

Winning a major prize at last May’s Cannes and the French finalist for Best International Film this year, Ladj Ly’s Les Misérables is a searing story of an escalating volatile situation taking place in Montfermeil, a Parisian project. A new policeman Stéphane (Damien Bonnard) joins the anti-crime squad and is paired up with Chris (Alexis Manenti) and Gwada (Djebril Zonga), whose methods are sometimes brutal and against the people they are supposed to be protecting. The trio get into a whole heap of trouble when they use excessive force on a gang of young boys misbehaving. The film builds sustainable tension across its running time until it boils over, with assured intense filmmaking.

We recently met with Ly in New York to discuss his film, opening today in limited release. [This interview was conducted in French and English with the help of an interpreter and has been edited and condensed for clarity.] 

Murtada Elfadl: The film has a lot of perspectives. The police, young Issa and his friends, the many factions living in the area. Can you talk about balancing the different perspectives and different characters?

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