Interview: Laura Wandel on working with child actors in Belgium's Oscar finalist 'Playground'

by Nathaniel R

This season's finalist list for the Best International Feature Film Oscar is a mixture of international icons (Farhadi! Sorrentino!), legends in the making (Hamaguchi! Trier!) and rising auteurs (everyone else). Four of the films are even directorial debuts. Imagine being shortlisted for the Oscar on your first movie! That's what's happened to Belgium's Laura Wandel.

The 37 year old filmmaker had been making short films since 2007. After her 2014 short Les corps éstrangers competed at Cannes, it was time to make the leap to features. The result, which was tabled for a time due to pandemic delays, was the moving bullying drama Playground about a brother and sister struggling in school. We were delighted to speak to Wandel shortly after her moving film made the finals...

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Best International Film: Belgium, Kosovo, Russia

by Cláudio Alves

Our odyssey through the Best International Film submissions continues, this time focused on women behind the camera. As Juan Carlos' series Through Her Lens reminds us, there's a wealth of women directors every year whose work gets forgotten in lieu of their male counterparts. Of course, that's true in the Best Director Oscar race, but it also applies to every other category, including this one. From schoolyard bullying shot as psychological warfare to the physical aftermaths of an unspoken massacre, the submissions from Belgium, Kosovo, and Russia showcase the talent of female artists who explore many shades of brutality through a woman's point-of-view…

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Foreign Film Oscar Hopefuls with Matthias Schoenaerts & Diane Kruger

We have 10 official submissions for the foreign language race thus far. With the October 2nd deadline looming, expect more news regularly. As a quick reminder or 101 guide for newbies, to qualify for Oscar Foreign Race you have to a) open in your home country theatrically between October 1st of the previous year and September 30th of the Oscar submission year b) be chosen as the submission by your country (only one per country no matter how many films your country makes) and c) be in a non-English language for at least 50% of the dialogue and d) and this is where it often gets tricky... be primarily, on a creative level, from your submitting country. That is to say your cast or crew or at least your director needs to be from the country that's submitting you.

Official Submissions Thus Far

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Interview: Belgian Oscar Submission 'The Ardennes,' Testosterone, and Building Characters

By Jose Solis.

Belgium’s Oscar submission The Ardennes feels like Drive by way of Fargo and Bullhead, i.e. it’s a gritty neo-noir that thrills and disturbs in equal measures. The quasi-Biblical (or Greek) plot follows two brothers who are like night and day, Dave (Jeroen Perceval who wrote the play the film is based on) is a kind soul who works in a carwash and is trying to set up a home with his girlfriend Sylvie (Veerle Baetens), the problem is she was his brother Kenneth’s (Kevin Janssens) girl before he went away to prison. His release brings the family happiness and pain, as they try to help him adapt to the new situation. First time director Robin Pront crafts a smart thriller with colorful characters and testosterone to spare. I sat down with the director and leading man Janssens to discuss the film’s themes, the Oscar race and Belgian cinema.

Read the interview after the jump.

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Bye Instant Watch: United 93, Star Trek, and a Dutch LGBT Gem

Here's another batch of movies leaving Instant Watch services on Netflix of Amazon Prime if you'd like to catch up with them. It also provides us with an excuse to talk about a handful of random movies so why not. We've freeze framed randomly. Let's begin...

UNITED 93 (2006) ends February 11th on Netflix

United 93, Cleveland. Verify your altitude." 

This freeze frame is about 45 minutes in. The terrorists have just taken the cockpit when air traffic control tries to reach them. God this movie is upsetting. 

WERE THE WORLD MINE (2008) ends February 11th on Netflix

-Jonathan. You look luminous.
-I'm in love.  

I dont remember this well beyond its silly everyone straight becomes gay through magic plot. But I think there was a good musical number?  [More films after the jump...]

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