International Contenders: Will we get a repeat Nominee?

by Nathaniel R

Roughly 34% of Oscar's Best International Feature hopefuls (thus far) come from debut filmmakers so it feels like we're headed for an "emerging filmmaker" kind of year at the Oscars (and not just in this category). But while the 2020 competition is likely to favor fresh blood statistically, eight countries have submitted famous directors who've made it to the nomination list already... or almost made it in two of the cases.

They are...

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Chi Film Fest: "Charlatan" an Oscar Submission

Coverage from the 56th annual Chicago Film Festival running October 14 - 25. 

by Nick Taylor

It takes a while for Charlatan, the newest film by Agnieszka Holland and the Czech Republic’s Oscar submission for Best International Feature this year, to get its feet under itself. The semi-fictionalized story of renowned Czech herbalist and healer Jan Mikolášek (played by Ivan Trojan for most of the film and by Josef Trojan, his son, as a young man), Charlatan opens with the death of president Antonín Zápotocký in 1957. With his biggest political ally and former patient gone, Mikolášek is warned to flee the Czech Republic before he's arrested by the Communist party. He refuses, either because he’s too bullishly stubborn or too self-flagellating, and is soon arraigned with his assistant František Palko (Juraj Loj) on death penalty-level charges that his lawyer proves are a sham with little investigation. The party doesn’t if the case is strong, or even real, as long as he’s executed. 

The film jumps between this scenario and following Mikolášek’s beginnings as a soldier in World War I, his training with a local herbalist named Mülbacherová (Jaroslava Pokorná), and the formation of his practice with František. Charlatan delineating these timelines with a color tint heavy enough to satisfy anyone who found the dual threads in Little Women difficult to track...

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More International Submissions including Agnieszka Holland's "Charlatan"

by Nathaniel R

We're up to 14 announced submissions for this year's Best International Feature Oscar so those submission charts are updated with the following films added

• Algeria - Héliopolis 
• Czech Republic - Charlatan
• Ecuador - Emptiness
• Kosovo - Exile
• Singapore - Wet Season

We've only had the pleasure of seeing one of these five newly announced titles so far, Wet Season (which was a Golden Horse nominee last year). I liked it at TIFF in 2019 though I thought it erred on the side of being too much of a "slow burn" if you know what I mean. But a year later I'll admit that I think of it surprisingly frequently so even though I was a thumbs up, I underestimated it! It's an emotionally complicated story of an unhappy teacher who becomes way too involved with the life of her lonely student (they're pictured above). 

But back to the submissions, of the 14 films we know about so far 6 are from female directors! How about that? One of those female directors is a regular, in point of fact...

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Poland's Oscar stats and the first 2020 news of the International Feature Race

If you've been reading TFE for any length of time, you already know we're obsessive about Oscar's Foreign Language Film race, last year retitled to Best International Feature Film. Normally we've long since begun talking about the submission list, but 2020 remains an unruly unusual beast. But we do have two pieces of news to share regarding our favourite non-actress based category.

First, we've neglected to mention that Oscar's longer-than-usual release eligibility period has also affected Best International Film...

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Foreign Film Race Pt 4: Female Directors and Oscar Submissions

Everything you wanted to know about the foreign language film race ...but were afraid to ask*

Toni Erdman, one of 14 films in the Foreign race directed by women, is widely expected to be nominatedPt 1 All the trailers -Albania to Italy
Pt 2 All the trailers - Japan to Yemen
Pt 3 Debut directors

Though Hollywood has an appaling track record when it comes to female representation behind the camera, other countries actually fare a lot better in this regard. Oh sure, it's still not as easy as it is for the men, but each and every year we see several female filmmakers from various countries around the Globe chosen as the best representative of their country's cinema. Now try to imagine how rarely that would happen if the USA had to export only one film to represent them annually. Hard to imagine isn't it? The only times it might conceivably have happened would have been Lost in Translation (2003) which lost best picture to a New Zealand production or The Hurt Locker (2009) which actually won best picture.

Denmark's PAW (1959) and Italy's SEVEN BEAUTIES (1976) were Oscar firsts for women

The 20 Oscar Nominated Foreign Language Films Directed By Women (and this year's hopefuls) after the jump. If you've ever wanted to do that 52 films by women viewing challenge some great ideas follow...

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