Oscar's International Race Pt 1 - The Female Directors

The Academy has officially announced list of 93 contenders -- an all time record --  for this year's Best International Feature Film Oscar (submission chart here). So let's dive in! 

Last year's sole female nominee for Best International Feature, Nadine Labaki (Capernaum) is in front of the camera this time for Lebanon's new submission "1982"

by Nathaniel R

We've been tracking the just renamed foreign-language film race for so long that we love to dig in to stats a bit. You may recall that last year 20 of the 87 pictures were directed or co-directed by women. This year 28 of the 93 contenders are -- that's 30% of the list which is easily an all-time record! Here's another promising note for the future in regards to gender parity: female directors made only 2 of the nominated foreign-language films in the first quarter century of this category but things opened in the 1980s with four nominees from female directors, there were four again in the 1990s, and then seven in the 2000s. Though the 2010s have only seen five thus far, the trend is still promising; in the past four consecutive years one of the nominees has come from a female auteur:

2015 Mustang (France) by Deniz Gamze Ergüven
2016 Toni Erdmann (Germany) by Maren Ade
2017 On Body and Soul (Hungary) by Idilko Enyedi
2018 Capernaum (Lebanon) by Nadine Labaki

Will the trend continue this year? Here are the 29 women who will be trying to make that happen.

The 29 Women Competing in the Best International Feature Race
* means they co-directed their film

Click to read more ...

Podcast: Judy's Pain & Glory

with Murtada Elfadl & Nathaniel R

 

Index (58 minutes)
00:01 Pain and Glory - Pedro Almodóvar's career, the moment we fell for the picture, and Antonio Banderas tender dazzling homage/star turn.
14:50 Oscar's Best International Feature competition. How they vote, movies we love, and what might get nominated.
27:27 Renée Zellweger as 'The World's Greatest Entertainer' in Judy. The performance and the film.
43:11 The Best Actress Race: Scarlett, Cynthia, Renee, Alfre, and more...

Related Reading/Listening
Murtada's Pain & Glory Review
Nathaniel's episodes of Las Culturistas
Foreign Submissions you can stream right now

 You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. Continue the conversations in the comments, won't you? 

Pain and Glory, Judy

Golden Horse Nominations for 2019

by Nathaniel R

A lonely student and his teacher become friendly in "Wet Season"

Usually the Golden Horse nominations are a fun and glamorous mix of all the hot movies and movie stars from various Chinese language countries. This year, however, due to political fallout from a speech last year and a Chinese boycott because of increasing tension between the way China sees Taiwan and the way Taiwan sees itself, no films from Mainland China are competing (which takes out a huge chunk of movies and a lot of the most famous movie stars). So the bulk of the features nominated this year are features from Taiwan with a little Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong thrown in. UPDATED WITH THE WINNERS MARKED BY STARS

BEST NARRATIVE FEATURE 

• A Sun (Taiwan) ★
• Suk Suk (Hong Kong)
• The Garden of Evening Mists (Malaysia)
• Wet Season (Singapore)
• Detention (Taiwan)

You may have noticed that Taiwan's current Oscar submission Dear Ex  (streaming on Netflix) is not nominated here. That's because it was a major nominee last year at these same awards. Curiously Singapore's current Oscar submission A Land Imagined (streaming on Netflix) was not nominated in Best Feature at the Golden Horse Awards. It had to settle for a few craft nominations...

Click to read more ...

International Feature Film Oscar List... we're almost there!

Trine Dyrholm seduces her stepson in Denmark's submission "Queen of Hearts"

Countries have until October 1st to submit their representing film to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. Though there's one week left, we now have practically the whole list with 82 pictures announcing (see the charts and the letterboxd list) Last year the list was  87 pictures long and the record is 92 which was in 2017 so we'll probably see a slightly longer list when the Academy officially publishes it. Usually one or two films will mysteriously drop out or be replaced that were previously announced, too. So it's not official until it's official.

Do we talk about this category too much at TFE? Maybe so but we're into it. After the jump, 10 entries you can see early if you try and the 9 newest submissions.

The latest entries...

Click to read more ...

TIFF Quickie: Crazy White Women!

by Nathaniel R

For this last batch of short TIFF reviews, let's look at three films about mysterious and/or psychologically complex female characters. The post title was glib but the films aren't. 

DISCO (Jorunn Mykelbust Syversen, Norway)
This puzzling drama centers on a champion dancer whose mom and step-dad run some kind of evangelical church. Apparently in Scandivania -- as with America -- conservative faith movements are on the rise. Syversen shows empathy for her characters but chills it with a clinically detached rhythym to the cutting. The lost protagonist Mirjam (Josefine Frida Pettersen) has mysterious physical troubles and vacant psychology that can bring flickers of Todd Haynes' Safe (1995) to mind.

Syversen's strongest skill seems to be in observational mode. In one escalating series of scene at a Jesus camp the choices in camera distance are particularly compelling. In medium shot we observe a group of boys being told to breathe quickly in and out of paper bags to drive out the demons inside them. Cut to a long shot as we watch them comically pass out as they hyperventilate. This is a followed by a not at all comical baptism that is shot more like a drowning. Despite Syverson's obvious skill and a tight running time (94 minutes), Disco is far too repetitive and its point of view remains as opaque as Mirjam's psychology. It's not enough, always, to merely observe. C

EMA (Pablo Larraín, Chile)
The first image is a startling one: a still working traffic light engulfed in flames...

Click to read more ...