Germany submits "I'm Your Man" to the Oscars

by Nathaniel R

Dan Stevens and Sandra Huller in a scene from "I'm Your Man"

Germany, which has long been popular with the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences has announced their submission for the 94th Oscars. They're going with the sci-fi flavored romantic comedy I'm Your Man starring British hunk Dan Stevens (who happens to be fluent in German) as an android specifically programmed to make a woman happy. The movie, distributed by Bleecker Street in the US, hits theaters a week from Friday... 

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What will Spain submit to the Oscars?

by Nathaniel R

Spain, which is Oscar's third favourite country (statistically speaking) in the Best International Feature Film race, will announce their submission on October 5th. In the meantime they have released the names of the three films that they are considering. It's Pedro Almodóvar's melodrama Parallel Mothers versus Fernando León de Aranoa's comedy The Good Boss versus Marcel Barrena's adventure film Mediterráneo. All three of the films are slated for October release in Spain so we don't yet know how the "home team" will react to them. Still this trio of possibilities is interesting for a few fun triva reasons...

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Ophir Nominations - which will become Israel's Oscar submission?

by Nathaniel R

Each year the winner of Best Picture at the Ophir Awards becomes the Israeli submission for the Oscar. If you've seen any of these pictures, do sound off. This year their nominees are...

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Oscar's "Best International Feature Film" race begins

by Nathaniel R

The 94th Oscars are six months away but we now know seven of the contenders for the next Best International Feature Film race (so it's time to start updating/building the Oscar charts). In the past couple of years this category has been on absolute fire with the double whammy of extremely enthusiastic critical acclaim and crowd-pleasing entertainments via South Korea's Parasite (2019) and Denmark's Another Round (2020). For the first time that we can recall the window of eligibility this season follows the exact calendar year (usually international film contenders calendar runs October to September but last year f***ed with everyone's calendar) so as long as a movie opens in its home country sometime in 2021 it is theoretically eligible for submission. Each country can only send one film, though, as per always.

Here are the first seven contenders announced. If we've reviewed them there's a link...

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European Film Awards long list, Part 1

by Nathaniel R

Celine Sciamma's "Petite Maman" could be up for EFAs this year

The European Film Awards (EFA) don't yet have the same cache as BAFTA or the Oscars. They have a more difficult hurdle to climb to form a recognizable identity. It's much easier to asses just one country's cinema (primarily) as BAFTA and AMPAS do, then determine "bests" from a vast swath of  different cultures, different cinema trends, different languages, and so on. Nevertheless, we think EFA deserves more attention than they get. Last season's big winner Denmark's Another Round was also a hit at the Oscars.

They've recently announced the first of two longlists for the 2021 season from which their 4000 or so members will vote on to choose nominees later in the year. The list follows after the jump...

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