The Film Experience™ was created by Nathaniel R. All material herein is written by our team. (This site is not for profit but for an expression of love for cinema & adjacent artforms.)
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Monday, August 11, 2025 at 8:00AM 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...
Friday, June 13, 2025 at 3:00PM by Nathaniel R
possible submissions from Japan & Norway
Counterintuitively, we begin this year's April Foolish Predictions (two months late --- woot!) with a category for which we currently have no proof of eligibility for. No country that competes in Oscar's annual Best International Feature Film category has (yet) announced their submission. But we do know, from past experiences, that many of the submissions each year will have premiered at film festivals ranging from last fall in 2024 through the fall of 2025. So we looked at recent editions of Sundance, Berlinale, and Cannes for clues. This is great fun to do as anything is possible this early; you don't even need a US distributor to compete (though of course it doesn't hurt)...
Tuesday, March 4, 2025 at 11:00PM by Nathaniel R
FLOW is first in two different ways!
UPDATED WITH MORE STATS (03/06/25 1:30 PM EST)
With another year ending we can now look at new stats and trivia from the year that was and acknowledge records that weren't broken, too, but are of note. If you have anything to add to the list share it in the comments, please. Herewith some things to ponder in regards to Oscar trivia...
Friday, February 21, 2025 at 10:00AM The Oscar Volleys are back for some post-nomination talks. Today, Eric Blume and Nathaniel Rogers discuss Best International Film...
EMILIA PÉREZ | © Netflix
ERIC: Nathaniel, what fun to have you all to myself to discuss the nominees for Best International Film (which I sometimes still call Best Foreign Film, because that's been in my brain too long). I think we have five pretty terrific nominees this year. Before we get into their Oscar-ability, what is your personal take across the five films? I wouldn't be mad at a ranking!
NATHANIEL: I share the same nomenclature waffling but we both were Oscar watching since the 1980s so who can blame us?...
Friday, January 17, 2025 at 4:30PM 
In the last hours of voting for the Oscar nominations, let's celebrate one of the best films up for Academy consideration. It's none other than the Canadian submission for Best International Film, Matthew Rankin's sophomore feature – Universal Language. If watching the director's debut, The Twentieth Century, felt like witnessing the second coming of fellow Winnipegger Guy Maddin, seeing the wonder of his latest work is akin to re-encountering Jacques Tati in the 21st century. Or perchance a Manitoban Abbas Kiarostami. Rather than evading such comparisons, Rankin runs straight at them, making his latest project into a dialogue between filmic languages and other idioms along the way, reaching for the fantastical, so specific as to be universal…
