Best International Feature: Italy, Palestine & Indonesia's contenders

by Cláudio Alves

We're just two weeks away from knowing the 10 finalists for the Best International Feature Oscar. It'll happen on December 16th and, as we wait away the days, it's a good time to investigate the 91 submitted films. Some of them have already been reviewed here at The Film Experience, like Senegal's Atlantics, South Korea's Parasite and Spain's Pain and Glory, among others. Still, there are many less talked about films that deserve attention too, spanning from nationalities that have been overrepresented in the Academy's history to others that have still to conquer their first nomination.

Think of Italy's newest crime epic, Palestine's offbeat comedy or Indonesia's lyrical reveries through a dancer's memories…

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Centennial: Gillo Pontecorvo

100 year ago today in Pisa, Italy, the director Gillo Pontecorvo was born.

He only made five narrative features in his career, which is surely one of the reasons that he's overshadowed in cultural memory by the far more prolific mid 20th century Italian giants Vittorio de Sica and Federico Fellini. Still Pontecorvo's two best known films were both nominated for the Best Foreign Film at the Academy Awards, the concentration camp drama Kapò (1960) and the resistance/war drama The Battle of Algiers (1966). The latter, which won the Golden Lion at Venice in its year, is still revered as a masterpiece. Have you seen either of these classics?

Austria's "Joy" is out of the Oscar race

by Cláudio Alves

...And then there were 91...

As we predicted back when Nigeria's Oscar submission was disqualified from the Best International Feature race, the same fate has befallen Austria's Joy. Despite some German dialogue, most of the film is in English, due to the fact it tells the story of Nigerian immigrants living in Europe. After all, Nigeria's official language is English. Once again, such news makes us ask ourselves if this is a fair predicament. One thing's for sure – it's ridiculous that the Academy doesn't vet the country's submissions before announcing the list of eligible films. It'd certainly avoid a great deal of scandal.

Even if it's amply justifiable, such disqualification is unfortunate, even a bit sad, because Joy's an achingly poignant triumph. The sort which deserves to be celebrated by the Academy, but seldomly is…

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"Pain and Glory" leads the European Film Award Nominations

by Nathaniel R

The European Film Awards will be held in Berlin in just one month (December 7th) and big names are nominated: Pedro Almodóvar, Antonio Banderas, Yorgos Lanthimos, Olivia Colman, Roman Polanski, and more. But the question is who will actually attend and who will win? The Oscar submitted titles from Spain (Pain and Glory) and Italy (The Traitor) lead the nominations along with Roman Polanski's An Officer and a Spy from France. Almodóvar is of course an old favourite of the EFAs. With the Pain & Glory nominations he's now up to 22 EFA nominations (he's won 6 times plus received a special honor). His movies have won the top prize twice (All About My Mother and Talk To Her) while Volver won an "audience" version of Best Film, too. 

A full list of nominations with more comments is after the jump...

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How to fix the Best International Film category?

by Cláudio Alves

This year, the Best International Film category celebrated a record-setting number of submissions - 93 in total. 2019 has also been marked by the renaming of the award, which was previously called the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, as well as some new rules that slightly change the voting process. However, one of the unhappiest yearly traditions associated with this honor refuses to go away. Once more, some films are being disqualified.

Nigeria's Lionheart isn't eligible for the Oscar. This is particularly terrible when one considers it's the first submission from one of the few African nations with a thriving film industry. Not surprisingly, the decision has generated quite a bit of controversy, with such renowned filmmakers as Ava DuVernay criticizing it…

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