Doc Corner: Three International Feature Oscar Contenders

By Glenn Dunks

Documentaries have been popping up more and more in the line-ups for Best International Feature (née Best Foreign Language Film) since Cambodia snagged a remarkably unlikely nomination for The Missing Picture. Last year’s double-whammy nomination for Honeyland in both the international and documentary categories (from an equally unexpected country, North Macedonia) has no doubt emboldened national selectors to choose non-fiction titles, which I am certainly happy about.

Three such selections are playing DOC NYC, the New York documentary festival that opened its virtual doors yesterday. It may be too early to see what the Best International Feature category delivers us this year (as of right now the number of submissions sits at 43), but the three films here representing Kenya, Romania, and Venezuela are all strong and fine contenders. In fact, there is at least one title here that I reckon could deliver for its home country—one that has been routinely ‘snubbed’ by the category, so much so that they changed the rules. Could this be their year for redemption with one of the best movies of 2020?

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Spain's big mistake

by Cláudio Alves

Throughout the recent awards season, I wrote several pieces about the Best International Feature race, an Oscar category that's very dear to my heart. It's also a source of endless frustration for I am Portuguese and Portugal remains the country that holds the record for most submissions without getting a single Oscar nomination. To be fair, that's not always the Academy's fault. Sometimes, the choice submission is so mind-bogglingly misguided, it kills any hope of a nomination the minute it's announced. It's not always that the submitted films are lacking in quality, but, sometimes they're productions that were little seen outside of Portugal and received no buzz whatsoever.

This is by no means a strictly Portuguese problem, mind you. In fact, since we're celebrating the 2002 movie year, it seems like a good time to explore one of Spain's most misjudged bits of Oscar selection…

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New Rules for the Next Oscar Race!

by Nathaniel R

Is the Academy being proactive or panicky? That's up for debate but they've made a big announcement. Though the Oscar ceremony is almost exactly 10 month away (February 28th, 2021) -- practically a full year -- AMPAS is planning for the worst with the coronavirus pandemic and adjusting accordingly. The biggest news might well be a 'letting the genie out of the bottle' rule change. They will now allow streaming films without theatrical releases to compete for Oscars.

From their own mouths:

“The Academy firmly believes there is no greater way to experience the magic of movies than to see them in a theater. Our commitment to that is unchanged and unwavering. Nonetheless, the historically tragic COVID-19 pandemic necessitates this temporary exception to our awards eligibility rules. The Academy supports our members and colleagues during this time of uncertainty. We recognize the importance of their work being seen and also celebrated, especially now, when audiences appreciate movies more than ever.” 

We've assumed this was going to happen eventually though the notion frightens us for what it portends, not for its arguable necessity at the moment. This change makes a lot of sense in this extremely unprecedented situation BUT, and here's the nuanced bit of our feelings that's hard to sell in easy sound bites....

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Review: Don't miss "And Then We Danced"

by Cláudio Alves

A man is a monument of strength, hard and unbending. A woman is a vision of purity, soft and willowy. For those who teach Georgian traditional dance, this binary is tantamount to a universal truth whose cosmic certainty must be supported by the choreographed bodies. But binaries are conventions fated to be broken by the messiness of being human. Merab, the protagonist of Levan Akin's And Then We Danced, is the element of humanity that breaks the convention and exposes its brittle frailty.

Merab's too soft to be a monument. He's too willowy to be the man of folkloric tradition. He's still a man, though, and a dancer too, one that trains to be part of the National Georgian Ensemble...

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1999 with Nick: When "All About My Mother" triumphed over ???

In advance of the Oscars, Nick Davis has been looking back at the Academy races of 20 years ago, spotlighting movies he’d never seen and what they teach us about those categories, then and now.

After that trip back to the Documentary race, we're ending the week by spotlighting the other category that's taken the hugest strides to adjust its nominating process and champion better work. It’s also no accident that I’m ending with a category that Nathaniel has tracked with unusual care and detail since Oscar-focused websites have existed—indeed, long before many of his peers paid more than cursory attention. The 72nd Academy Awards took place eight years before the transformative addition of an Executive Committee to the vetting process that produces the annual roster for "Best Foreign Language Film," which of course this year got rebranded as "Best International Film". This category used to be heavy with inoffensive mediocrities, or sometimes offensive ones. Tracking down the contenders, which was often difficult to do, rarely felt like making contact with the best of world cinema in any given year, and with very few exceptions the winners across the 1990s were an undistinguished lot. (Or maybe you’re a major devotée of Mediterraneo or Kolya?)

By that standard, 1999 was a pretty good year, since I imagine that Pedro Almodóvar's All About My Mother would be most people's choice as the best film to cop this prize during the whole decade. This critical and popular favorite needed no help from any Executive Committee to stay alive during the balloting. In fact, the only mystery is why the movie couldn't make more inroads into admittedly competitive races like Actress, Supporting Actress, Director, Screenplay, Production Design, Costume Design, Editing, or Picture...

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