More International Contenders including a Student Academy Award Winner!

Since the last roundup the following countries have been added to the list of contenders for this year's Best International Feature Film race bringing our total to 77 contenders.

• Argentina -The Sleepwalkers
• Armenia - Songs of Solomon
• Bolivia - Chaco
• Egypt - When We're Born (a musical!) 
• Hungary - Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time (Hungary & Oscar)
• India - Jallikattu (streaming on Prime)
• Ireland - Arracht
• Italy - Notturno (Reviewed | Italy & Oscar) 
• Lebanon - Broken Keys (more on this one below)
• Philippines - Mindanao
• Thailand - Happy Old Year (streaming on Netflix)

You can follow the list as it grows at our Oscar charts or on our Letterboxd list.  

Jimmy Keyrouz. Photographed by Christophe Meireis.

One of fun trivia items about this new batch is that Jimmy Keyrouz, the 32 year old behind Lebanon's Broken Keys actually has Oscar history. He won a Student Academy Award for his short Nocturne in Black four years ago. That short didn't end up getting Oscar-nominated, but he made the finalist list. Now his first feature, about a pianist struggling to repair his piano in a town where terrorists have banned music, is submitted by his home country. How about that? Congratulations! 

If you want to watch the submissions, 12 of the 77 titles are streaming.

 India's Jallikattu is on Amazon Prime, Guatemala's La Llorona is on Amazon, Indonesia's Impetigore is on Shudder or Roku, Lithuania's Nova Lituania is on MUBI, South Korea's Man Standing Next is on Amazon, YouTube, or iTunes, and Chile's The Mole Agent on Hulu. Netflix has the other six currently available titles: Austria's What We Wanted, Mexico's I'm No Longer Here, Spain's The Endless Trench, Taiwan's A Sun, Turkey's Miracle in Cell No 7, and Thailand's Happy Old Year. 

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Review: Henry Golding in "Monsoon"

by Allen Nguyen

Henry Golding was eight years old when he and his family left Malaysia for England. Director Hong Khaou (Lilting) was an infant when his family fled the Khmer Rouge for Vietnam. That shared experience of displacement-fueled ambiguity and the concept of reconciling one’s national identity is the foundation on which the new film Monsoon is built.   

Golding plays Kit, a British-Vietnamese man who returns to the country he and his family fled some thirty years prior. Kit cannot speak Vietnamese, has cloudy childhood memories of life in Vietnam, and is unable to process the unfamiliarity of the land he once called home...

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International Contenders Update

Since the last round up 6 more countries have announced Oscar submissions bringing the total of competing films to 43.

 

• BELGIUM - Working Girls  A drama about three women from France crossing the border daily to Belgium for sex work
• INDONESIA - Impetigore (previously discussed) Usually there's a random horror movie somewhere in the submission list but this year we have not one but two Asian horror movies (the other is Roh/Soul from Malaysia). The only horror movie we can think of to be successfully nominated in this category was a very long time ago with Japan's Kwaidan (1964). 
• IRAN - Sun Children (previously discussed) 
• KENYA - The Letter This is the first time Kenya has submitted a documentary (the nomination for Honeyland last year seems to have embolded various countries to send docs as it looks like there will be more of them than usual this year)
• LESOTHO -This is Not a Burial, It's a Resurrection First submission from this country! It's one of only three independent states on earth that are entirely surrounded by another single country (in this case South Africa) -- they call them "enclaved countries", so it's the first submission from any enclaved country actually (the others are San Marino and Vatican City). The film is about an 80 year old woman who fights the construction of a reservoir in her village
• TURKEY - Miracle in Cel No 7  This is a loose remake of a South Korean film of the same name about a mentally disabled man who is wrongly imprisoned. The original is just 7 years old and it's already been remade by Turkey, The Philippines, and Indonesia.

More details on the Oscar charts and also a visual overview of the whole field at Letterboxd

More International Oscar News: Several "Finalist" Lists Announced

by Nathaniel R

The Man Standing Next ...has the difficult task of following in Parasite's footsteps!

The submission charts for Oscar's Best International Feature Film race have been updated to reflect more new entries like Croatia's Extracurricular, Palestine's Gaza Mon Amour, Panama's war drama Causa Justa , Romania's documentary Collective, and South Korea's The Man Standing Next.

But the big news at the moment is six finalist lists so keep your eye out for any of these pictures to rise up...

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New International Submissions: Georgia, Luxembourg, and Taiwan

by Nathaniel R

Beginning

We have three more official submissions for Best International Feature Film at the forthcoming Oscars, bringing the number up to nine, and one of them is streaming on Netflix for your pleasure or cathartic misery as the case may be... 

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