32 films competing for nominations in Best Animated Feature

by Nathaniel R

Frozen 2 is clearly hoping to be the first animated franchise to win the Animated Feature category twice.

The Oscar race is officially on for Best Animated Feature. 32 films are planning to compete, which is easily a record as there are usually closer to 22 or so, so we'll definitely have 5 nominees again this year. But the question is which. We've divvied the 32 films up into types to make this easier to process...

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Oscar's International Race Pt 5 - The Eye Candy

by Nathaniel R

Now that we've covered female directors, returning auteurs, trivia, and half of the trailers, and updated all the charts, let's do something lighter... and sexier... before we wrap up with the rest of the movie trailers.

We've selected 9 hunks for you to gawk at from the 93 films submitted. In the comments we trust that you'll let us know whose, uh, native tongue you'd most like to learn.

For educational purposes.

After the jump, beautiful men from Argentina, Norway, Pakistan, Thailand, and more...

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Oscar's International Race Pt 3a - Movie Trailers (A-K)

The Academy has announced the official submission list for the 92nd Academy Awards in the Best International Feature Film category (renamed from Best Foreign-Language Film). This year we have 93 films competing.

As is our practice, we're sharing all the trailers (that could be found) having already shared stats and introduced you to the growing ranks of female directors. We'll be tweaking the Oscar charts periodically but they're mostly complete now. Cinema is a global artform and that's why we invest so much time in this. This is only the first 40+ trailers (L through Z countries still to come) but it should keep your eyes busy for awhile...

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Oscar's International Race - Pt 2: Random Stats and Key Trivia

Now that we have the whole list of 93 films vying for the Oscar for Best International Feature Film, it's time for a collection of trivia regarding this particular vintage...

LONGEST FILM
The Painted Bird (Czech Republic) is just 11 minutes shy of three hours. Lots of films are that long but given that this movie has been referred to as 'the child rape Holocaust movie' three hours sounds utterly punishing. Naturally then, it's split audiences between 'masterpiece' and 'unwatchable' camps. Runners up: Domain (Portugal) and Truth or Justice (Estonia) are just a little bit shorter, both about two hours and 45 minutes long.

SHORTEST FILM
Poisonous Roses (Egypt) is just 70 minutes long. It's reportedly a mood piece about life in lower-class Cairo that primarily focuses on the relationship of a sister and brother. Runners up: The light documentary When Tomatoes Met Wagner (Greece) is just two minutes longer than that one. Belgium's Our Mothers, Belarus's Debut, Lithuania's Bridges of Time, Albania's The Delegation, and Montenegro's Neverending Past are the other really short titles, all clocking in at 80 minutes or less.

Movie stars, languages, and gayness are after the jump...

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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

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