Dutch, Swiss, and Israeli Shortlists for Oscar submission

Three more countries are nearing their decisions: Netherlands, Switzerland, and Israel. The first two have won the category before but Israel remains the most-nominated country that's never taken this Oscar. Let's look at the posisble contenders from each after the jump...

NETHERLANDS (57 submissions | 7 nominations | 3 wins | 3 additional finalists)
The Dutch will select their Oscar submission in early September but they've already revealed the eight finalists for that honor. Their peak, Oscar-wise was from the mid 80s to late 90s (all three wins and their most famous disqualification -- the terrifying thriller The Vanishing -- happened in a 12 year stretch). Only one of the films is from a previously submitted director and he won at the tail end of Netherlands hot streak in 1997. The submission will be one of these films: 

• Alpha. by Jan-Willem van Ewijk
  A father son drama/adventure set in the snow-capped mountains. (Not to be confused with Julia Ducornau's Cannes title of the same name.)
• Fabula by Michiel ten Horn
  A drama about a small time criminal and a drug deal gone bad
• Live for Me by Mark de Cloe 
  A terminally ill Dutch girl offers his place in the country to his best friend who is to be deported
• Our Girls by Mike van Diem
  Van Diem won the Oscar for his home country in something of a surprise (at the time) for Character (1997). He has not been a prolific director since. In his new film, chaos ensues between two longtime couples during an Alps vacation. 
• The Propagandist by Luuk Bouwman
  A documentary about a Dutch Nazi filmmaker
• Reedland by Sven Bresser 
  This directorial feature debut (which premiered in the Critics Week competition at Cannes) is about a reedcutter who discovers a girls dead body on his property.
• The System by Joris Postema
  A documentary about fear and people working for a liveable future
• Three Days of Fish by Peter Hoogendoorn
  A dramedy about a father and son reunion in Rotterdam. It's the most awarded of these eight films (so far) having picked up prizes at multiple festivals. 

What's your favourite Dutch film? I admit I am not well versed in their cinema beyond Paul Verhoerven.

SWITZERLAND (52 submissions | 5 nominations | 2 wins | 3 additional finalists)
Switzerland seems to have been inadvertently Oscar-cursed ever since the Academy stupidly disqualified Three Colors: Red back in 1994. In fact, they haven't been nominated since the Oscar-winning Journey of Hope (1990) thirty-five years ago. Will their new selection break the curse? They're deciding between...  

• Hanami by Denise Fernandes 
  The  dream like drama about an abandoned child on a volcanic isle has been winning Best New Director style prizes at various festivals. 
• Late Shift by Petra Volpe
  A medical drama about a nurse (Leonie Benesch of September 5, The Teacher's Lounge, and Babylon Berlin fame) on an intense shift. It's been praised for its cinematography. Volpe was previously submitted for The Divine Order (2017). 
• The Safe House by Lionel Baier
  This drama is about a 10 year old boy who was hidden at his grandparents house during the events of May 1968. It premiered at Berlinale earlier this year.  Baier has been considered by Switzerland for previous films like Continental Drift (South) and Vanity but he's yet to be chosen. 

ISRAEL (57 submissions | 10 nominations | 0 wins | 1 additional finalist) 
Israel automatically sends their Ophir Award Best Film winner (their Oscar equivalent) unless its ineligible for some reason. Here are their five Best Film nominees which are neatly an even split between female and male directors!

• Dead Language (12 Ophir nods) by Oded Binnun and Mihal Brezis
  The directors are husband and wife and were previously Oscar-nominated for the short film Aya (2012). This feature is an expansion on that short about a foreign man who mistakes a woman for being his driver at the airport -- she doesn't rush to correct him. Danish star Ulrich Thomsen (The Celebration) and Sarah Adler as "Aya" reprise their roles from that short. So there's Oscar history already should it win the Ophir and become Israel's submission... though perhaps there's too much English language here?  In English and Hebrew.
• Nandauri (9 Ophir nods) by Eti Tsicko.
  This one is about an Israeli lawyer (Neta Riskin) visiting Georgia with the intention of bringing an 11 year old boy back to Israel. In Georgian, Hebrew, and English.
• Oxygen (8 Ophir nods) by Netali Braun
  This is about a mother (Dana Ivgy, who has two Best Actress nods this year -- she's already won thrice) going to extreme lengths to prevent her son from being deployed in the war. It won Best Picture at ther Jerusalem film festival earlier this year. In Hebrew.
• The Sea (13 Ophir nods) by Shai Carmeli-Pollak
  Possibly the frontrunner for the Ophir Awards given that it leads the nominations. The drama is about a 12 year old Palestinian boy (Muhammad Gazawi, up for Best Actor) who sneaks into Israel to visit the beach for the first time. In Arabic and Hebrew. 
• Yes (8 Ophir nods) by Nadav Lapid
  Lapid is the most internationally well known of these five directors with critical successes like The Kindergarten Teacher (2014), Synonyms (2019) and Ahad's Knee (2021) behind him. His latest is a contemporary piece -- said to be a Fellini-esque critique on the Israeli government -- about a musician (Ariel Bronz) and dancer (Efrat Dor) and the composition of a new national anthem after the October 7 attacks. Yes premiered at Cannes this past summer. In Hebrew

None of these directors have won Best Film at the Ophirs so none have been submitted by Israel in the past. Israeli has had two hot streaks in this category, first in the early 1970s (four nominations across 71-77) and then again in the late Aughts (four nominations from 2007-2011) but Oscar voting hasn't gone their way since. What is your favourite Israeli film? I'd go with Late Marriage (2001) or The Band's Visit (2007) the former sadly snubbed by the Oscars, the other disqualified because of the amount of English language in it.

Which films do you think these countries will submit? 

South Korean Film Awards & the Oscar Race

by Nathaniel R

THE UGLY... one of 19 films competing to become the Oscar submission

Since we've just starting hearing about Oscar submission decisions from the 100+ countries that Oscar invites to participate each year, let's talk about a country that wisely invested in their own arts, with both deregulation and regulation tactics (reducing government censorship whilst protecting home-grown cinema from Hollywood dominance via screen quotas) for the past couple of decades. The results have been impressive and South Korean entertainment is big in multiple countries now, including the US. While their cinema has been popular and lauded for some time, the American Oscars haven’t quite come around, with the sole exception of Bong Joon-Ho's Parasite (2019). It helped that Parasite had a) absolutely exquisite timing of festivals-to-theater-to-awards pipeline and b) was easy to spot as an instant classic / masterpiece. The former is hard (though not impossible) to manage and the latter is exceedingly rare! 

We suspect that Oscar’s resistance to South Korean cinema has to do with the Academy's general genre-aversion...

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Turkey, Czech Republic, and Germany kick off the Best International Feature Film race

by Nathaniel R

We wondered which country would be the early bird this year and that distinction goes to Turkey. Since the submissions are due by October 1, the process in many countries is already well under way and the announcements typically come fast and furious from mid-August through September.

TURKEY 
Turkey has selected last year's Venice Horizons Jury prize winner One of Those Days When Hemme Dies to represent them at the Oscars. The film is the directorial debut of Murat Firatoglu who wrote, produced and stars in the film as a laborer on a tomato farm who decides to kill his boss (the titular character, Hemme) due to unpaid wages...

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Wes Anderson Ranked: Part One - Travelogues

by Cláudio Alves

THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME starts streaming on Peacock next Friday, July 25.

Have you seen The Phoenician Scheme already? Wes Anderson's 12th feature film went straight from its Cannes Competition premiere to a worldwide theatrical release, before making its way to digital. The film arrives ready to delight those who've kept faithful to the director's vision and enrage the many who already loathe his style. It's the kind of project that's unlikely to change anyone's mind about the auteur, perpetuating the same strategies he's been developing from the very start. But it's also the sort of thing that inspires a retrospective look at the Texan's filmography, tracing how one goes from Bottle Rocket to these latter confections. There's nobody like him working today. Not on such a scale, at least. Not in Hollywood, where such formalism is a common sacrificial lamb at the altar of conventional appeal.

But, because we love list-making at The Film Experience, this retrospective shall take the form of a personal ranking, divided into three parts (similar to the Hayao Miyazaki one, though less extensive). Hopefully, you'll be on board as I try to explain what each of these pictures means to me and how I've come to fall in love with the cinema of Wes Anderson…

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Halfway Mark Pt 3 (Finale): Twenty-Five Favorite Performances (Continued)

by Nathaniel R

Olivia Colman in PADDINGTON IN PERU

CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS POSTS
In part one we looked at favourite films and favourite craft achievements from January through June-ish releases. In part two we moved to the beautiful people to list 25 performances we adored in one way or another. The first dozen plus included Dakota Johnson as a conflicted matchmaker, Jack O'Connell as an Irish vampire, and Brad Pitt as a race-car driver.

Let's wrap things up now with another dozen actors including two film-stealing Oscar winners, two leading men still waiting on their first Oscar nod, and a former superhero playing against type.We'll rejoin that 'favs of the year' (thus far) list in progress with three fast-rising stars...

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