International Oscar Race Pt 1: The Contenders List and where to see them

Listen up Oscar fans and international cinema aficioniados. We'd been holding off on this three part deep dive into the list of titles vying for Best International Feature Film until the Academy's announcement. Sadly we hear through the grapevine that they're not actually making this list "official" until very late in January. In other words, less than two weeks after they announce the 90 plus titles, they'll be cutting most of them when the finalist list of ten is announced on February 9th. This is no way to treat the movies, giving them such a tiny window of "official" attention. So we're sharing the list of 93 titles (a record) now and doing our deep dive now... with the caveat that one or two titles might change in late January when the Academy makes this official. If things do change we'll republish the list and the articles then. If they don't, we can just link back. 

NOTES ON THIS LIST: For more details on the films like genre, plot, running time, directors, please see the corresponding Oscar charts linked below. If we've reviewed or written about the movie itself or the country's Oscar history, it's linked below. If the title has a * by it, that means it's got an arguably high profile going into the screenings / voting period (though that's no guarantee of a nomination) by way of either its filmmaking team, noisy campaign, media coverage, or festival heat...

CHART 1  Albania through Greece 

Finland. Denmark. Egypt. Costa Rica

• Albania, Open Door
• Argentina, The Sleepwalkers
• Armenia, Songs of Solomon
• Austria, What We Wanted  (streaming on Netflix)

• Bangladesh, Sincerely Yours Dhaka (streaming on Netflix)
• Belgium, Working Girls (streaming on Amazon Prime)
• Bolivia, Chaco
• Bosnia & Herzegovina, Quo Vadis, Aida?* 
• Brazil, Babenco: Tell Me When I Die  (streaming on MUBI outside the US)
• Bulgaria, The Father

• Cambodia, Fathers
• Cameroon, The Fisherman's Diary
• Canada, 14 Days, 12 Nights 
• Chile, The Mole Agent* (streaming on Hulu)
• China, Leap (streaming on Amazon Prime) 
• Colombia, Forgotten We'll Be / Memories of My Father
• Costa Rica, Land of Ashes (streaming on MUBI outside the US)
• Croatia, Extracurricular
• Cuba, Buscando A Casal
• Czech Republic, Charlatan* 

• Denmark, Another Round*  (available to rent)
• Dominican Republic, A State of Madness

• Ecuador, Emptiness
• Egypt, When We're Born
• Estonia, The Last Ones

• Finland, Tove
• France, Deux/Two of Us

• Georgia, Beginning *
• Germany, And Tomorrow the Entire World
• Greece, Apples

CHART 2 Guatemala through Pakistan

Hong Kong. Nigeria. Latvia. Iceland

• Guatemala, La Llorona (available to rent)*
• Honduras, Days of Light

• Hong Kong, Better Days (available to rent)
• Hungary, Preparations to be together for an unknown period of time

• Iceland, Agnes Joy
• India, Jallikattu (streaming on Amazon Prime)
• Indonesia, Impetigore (streaming on Shudder)
• Iran, The Sun / Sun Children*
• Ireland, Arracht/ Monster
• Israel, Asia*
• Italy, Notturno * 
• Ivory Coast, Night of the Kings *

• Japan, True Mothers
• Jordan, 200 Meters

• Kazakhstan, The Crying Steppe
• Kenya, The Letter
• Kosovo, Exile
• Kyrgyzstan, Running to the Sky

• Latvia, Blizzard of Souls / The Rifleman 
• Lebanon, Broken Keys
• Lesotho, This is not a Burial, It's a Ressurection * FIRST SUBMISSION
• Lithuania, Nova Lituania  (streaming on MUBI)
• Luxembourg, River Tales

• Malaysia, Roh/Soul
• Mexico, I'm No Longer Here * (streaming on Netflix)
• Mongolia, Veins of the World
• Montenegro, Breasts
• Morocco, The Unknown Saint

• Netherlands, Bulado
• Nigeria, The Milkmaid
• North Macedonia, Willow
• Norway, Hope

• Pakistan, Zindagi Tamasha/Circus of Life

CHART 3 - Palestine through Vietnam

Ukraine. Sweden. Poland. Vietnam

• Palestine, Gaza Mon Amour
• Panama, Operation Just Cause 
• Paraguay, Killing the Dead
• Peru, Song Without a Name (available to rent)
• Philippines, Mindanao
• Poland, Never Gonna Snow Again
• Portugal, Vitalina Varela (streaming on Criterion)

• Romania, Collective * (available to rent)
• Russia, Dear Comrades! *

• Saudia Arabia, Scales
• Senegal, Nafi's Father
• Serbia, Dara in Jasenovac
• Singapore, Wet Season
• Slovakia, The Auschwitz Report
• Slovenia, Stories from the Chestnut Woods
• South Africa, Toorbos
• South Korea, The Man Standing Next (available to rent)
• Spain, The Endless Trench (streaming on Netflix)
• Sudan, You Will Die at 20  FIRST SUBMISSION
• Suriname, Wiren   FIRST SUBMISSION
• Sweden, Charter
• Switzerland, My Little Sister

• Taiwan, A Sun (streaming on Netflix)
• Thailand, Happy Old Year (streaming on Netflix)
• Tunisia, The Man Who Sold His Skin
• Turkey, Miracle in Cell No 7 (streaming on Netflix)

• Ukraine, Atlantis
• Uruguay, Aleli (streaming on Netflix)

• Venezuela, Once Upon a Time in Venezuela
• Vietnam, Dreamy Eyes

This list is also available on Letterboxd if you'd like to track your viewing.

INITIALLY ANNOUNCED BUT NOT ON OSCAR'S SCREENING LIST

Algeria's Heliopolis, Belarus's Persian Lesson (disqualified as not Belarusian enough), Canada's Funny Boy (disqualified due to too much English language), Bhutan's Lunana: Yak in the Classroom, Portugal's Listen (disqualified due to too much English language), and Uzbekistan's 2000 Songs of Farida.

Are you planning on seeing any of these films? If you've already seen some which are you rooting for?  

Three Golden Globe "controversies" that shouldn't surprise anyone

Apologies for not addressing this earlier today but of the three Golden Globe rulings that have the internet's collective tongue wagging, only one of them surprised us and only in a very mild kind of way. Perhaps this is why we didn't jump to discuss figuring that people would respond with a shrug. How wrong we were! If you're like 'what the hell are you discussing, Nathaniel?' here's a quick survey.

The three controversial rulings:

1. Minari will not be eligible for Best Picture at the Globes but instead compete for Best Foreign Language Film. Our surprise level: 0%. The Globes have never allowed pictures that weren't in the English language to compete in Best Picture and we just assumed everyone knew this but we were quite wrong. The same exact thing happened as recently as last year (The Farewell, 2019) and as recently, before that, as the year before (Roma, 2018)...

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Review: Taiwan’s Oscar Submission "A Sun"

By: Patrick Gratton

They say that time is the eternal healer. It picks you up from your bootstraps and licks your wounds. Time is also the eternal grim reaper. It has the power to darken one’s heart, hope and inhibitions.  Chung Mong-Hong’s A Sun, the big winner at last year’s Golden Horse Awards and Taiwan's submission for the 93rd Oscars, is a 150+ minute meditational piece on the effects of time and its role in expanding and tightening the human spirit. 

For a film with such a daunting running time, A Sun begins with a bang! Teenager A-Ho (Wu Chien-to) races with fellow gang member on his motorcycle through the pouring rain to a local restaurant. A-Ho thinks this is a simple shakedown to intimidating a rival of theirs. But the gang amputates the rival's hand with a machete (in the film's goriest moment). A-Ho’s father A-Wan (Chien Yi-wen) advocates for a guilty sentence during his son’s trial. When questioned by his wife about why he’s so apathetic towards their son, A-Wan replies that he’s simply giving him a chance to repent while spending time behind bars...

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Review: Guatemala's Oscar submission "La Llorona"

by Nick Taylor

Three cheers for the Boston Society of Film Critics, who kicked off this year’s wave of critics prizes with an amazingly idiosyncratic list of winners and runners-up. Capping their day off with their Foreign Language Film category, they honored Jayro Bustamente’s political ghost story La Llorona, with The Painted Bird in second place. La Llorona has been selected as Guatemala’s submission for International Film at the Oscars, making this the second of Bustamente’s films to be submitted after his astonishing debut Ixcanul in 2015. Three more cheers for Cláudio Alves, whose heroically long FYC thread on Twitter has informed a lot of my recent choices for which 2020 films to catch up with.

La Llorona’s opening credits are delivered over a black background with white text, while a woman’s quiet, hurried, forceful prayers can be heard. Our first real image of the film is a close-up on the speaker’s face, revealed to be an older white woman (Margarita Kenéfic), back straight and eyes unwavering as she stares directly into the lens and asks for protection for herself and her family against those who seek them harm...

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What will the Golden Globes choose for international cinema?

by Nathaniel R

one of many titles that's eligible for the Globes but not the OscarsWhile we've never extensively covered the Golden Globes selection process it's worth noting that one of the categories where they historically definitely go their own way is in Best International Feature.

DIFFERENCES: Their aesthetic taste is different than Oscar voters but, more than that, they also have different rules. First, their own eligibility list is quite different and historically larger. Oscar only allows each country to submit one film (a system surely set in place to prevent France and Italy from hogging 100% of the nominations in the early years) but the Globes don't have that restriction so we've had years where they've honored more than one film from a single country. France, for instance, sent all of their Oscar submission finalists this year to the Globes. The Globes also don't get hung up on eligibility when it comes to international productions where many countries are involved as Oscar sometimes has. They also allow films from the United States to compete if they're not in the English language (so Minari and I Carry You With Me both have a shot at a nomination this year). There's one final difference: the Globes do not allow documentaries and animated films to compete in this category.

SIMILARITIES: Otherwise the rules are the same (eligibility window and no more than 50% in English) and a good chunk of the titles on Oscar's eligibility list are usually also sent to the Globes.

Here are the titles that differ from Oscar's list...

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