Review: Taiwan’s Oscar Submission "A Sun"

By: Patrick Gratton

They say that time is the eternal healer. It picks you up from your bootstraps and licks your wounds. Time is also the eternal grim reaper. It has the power to darken one’s heart, hope and inhibitions.  Chung Mong-Hong’s A Sun, the big winner at last year’s Golden Horse Awards and Taiwan's submission for the 93rd Oscars, is a 150+ minute meditational piece on the effects of time and its role in expanding and tightening the human spirit. 

For a film with such a daunting running time, A Sun begins with a bang! Teenager A-Ho (Wu Chien-to) races with fellow gang member on his motorcycle through the pouring rain to a local restaurant. A-Ho thinks this is a simple shakedown to intimidating a rival of theirs. But the gang amputates the rival's hand with a machete (in the film's goriest moment). A-Ho’s father A-Wan (Chien Yi-wen) advocates for a guilty sentence during his son’s trial. When questioned by his wife about why he’s so apathetic towards their son, A-Wan replies that he’s simply giving him a chance to repent while spending time behind bars...

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Review: Guatemala's Oscar submission "La Llorona"

by Nick Taylor

Three cheers for the Boston Society of Film Critics, who kicked off this year’s wave of critics prizes with an amazingly idiosyncratic list of winners and runners-up. Capping their day off with their Foreign Language Film category, they honored Jayro Bustamente’s political ghost story La Llorona, with The Painted Bird in second place. La Llorona has been selected as Guatemala’s submission for International Film at the Oscars, making this the second of Bustamente’s films to be submitted after his astonishing debut Ixcanul in 2015. Three more cheers for Cláudio Alves, whose heroically long FYC thread on Twitter has informed a lot of my recent choices for which 2020 films to catch up with.

La Llorona’s opening credits are delivered over a black background with white text, while a woman’s quiet, hurried, forceful prayers can be heard. Our first real image of the film is a close-up on the speaker’s face, revealed to be an older white woman (Margarita Kenéfic), back straight and eyes unwavering as she stares directly into the lens and asks for protection for herself and her family against those who seek them harm...

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What will the Golden Globes choose for international cinema?

by Nathaniel R

one of many titles that's eligible for the Globes but not the OscarsWhile we've never extensively covered the Golden Globes selection process it's worth noting that one of the categories where they historically definitely go their own way is in Best International Feature.

DIFFERENCES: Their aesthetic taste is different than Oscar voters but, more than that, they also have different rules. First, their own eligibility list is quite different and historically larger. Oscar only allows each country to submit one film (a system surely set in place to prevent France and Italy from hogging 100% of the nominations in the early years) but the Globes don't have that restriction so we've had years where they've honored more than one film from a single country. France, for instance, sent all of their Oscar submission finalists this year to the Globes. The Globes also don't get hung up on eligibility when it comes to international productions where many countries are involved as Oscar sometimes has. They also allow films from the United States to compete if they're not in the English language (so Minari and I Carry You With Me both have a shot at a nomination this year). There's one final difference: the Globes do not allow documentaries and animated films to compete in this category.

SIMILARITIES: Otherwise the rules are the same (eligibility window and no more than 50% in English) and a good chunk of the titles on Oscar's eligibility list are usually also sent to the Globes.

Here are the titles that differ from Oscar's list...

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Oscar submission deadline has passed for International Feature

Just a heads up that we forgot to mention. The deadline for countries to submit to the Oscars for Best International Feature Film passed on December 1st (the deadline is usually October 1st but they had two extra months this year due to COVID-19). All told 89 submissions have been announced (all accounted for on our Oscar charts) so we probably won't have a record breaking amount of titles. That said, 89 is a fluid number. The final "official" list generally includes a title or two that hadn't been announced previously and generally one or two of the ones that were announced are absent for vague reasons. All in all the list is made up of 33% debut filmmakers and 34% female directors so it's a "fresh voices" year. Only eight countries sent filmmakers who've already been nominated or who've made the finals. I'm on pins and needles to dive deeper into stats as I suspect the Academy will announce the full list very soon.

While we wait for the Official List we'll be sprucing up the other Oscar charts :) which we know need updates.

UPDATE: And here's the Golden Globes list of international hopefuls. Historically they have a different list than Oscar and also allow for more than one movie per country. 

China submits "Leap" to the Oscars

by Nathaniel R

China has submitted the women's volleyball drama Leap to the Oscars, which is already streaming on Amazon Prime. Gong Li headlines but you'd barely recognize her she's so unglamorous this time. The 55 year old superstar has recently returned to the screen after taking a few years off, and its' going pretty well. She's the flashiest thing about Disney's Mulan and now she's headlining her seventh Oscar submission in the International category. We already discussed China's Oscar history but how about Gong Li's history starring in Oscar hopefuls? Here they are...

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