Four More Foreign Film Oscar Submissions

by Nathaniel R

Four more official entries to the Foreign Language Film Oscar race.

• Birds of Passage -Colombia
  This is from the director Ciro Guerra (who has a co-director this time) the man behind Colombia's only Oscar nominee and TFE favorite Embrace of the Serpent.  The new film is a crime/family drama.
  Opening in the US in February. Orchard distributing
• Border -Sweden
  Un Certain Regard winner at Cannes this year. It's based on a novella by the author of Let the Right One In (!) and is a reportedly strange tale of a woman with the ability to sense and smell how people feel.
  Opening in the US October 26th. Neon distributing.
• Donbass -Ukraine
  From the acclaimed Sergey Loznitsa (My Joy, A Gentle Creature). This one is a cheerful tale (he said sarcastically given Loznitsa's filmography) about the degradation of Ukranian society in our post-truth world
• La Familia -Venezuela
  A father son drama about a violent neighborhood.
  Played in the US earlier this month. Film Movement distributing. 

UPDATE HOURS LATER - TWO MORE ENTRIES

• Never Look Away - Germany
  From Florian Henckel von Donnersmarch (The Lives of Others) comes this story of a romance between two art students (Tom Schilling and Paula Beer) and her father (Sebastian Koch) who fights against the relationship
• Ghost Hunting - Palestine
  A documentary about a former interrogation center in which the inmates reenact their interrogations inside a replica of the center built to scale

Related:
Updated Oscar charts for foreign film
First 10 official contenders for foreign film
49 suggested European Film Awards contenders
Spain's Finalists
Israel's Finalists

111 days 'til Oscar

Can you believe Germany's WINGS OF DESIRE (1987) was not nominated for Best Foreign Film? It won numerous prizes that year but Oscar skipped it.

According to numerologists 111 is a very powerful number, sometimes called an "angel number" for spiritual guidance. It signifies that a gate of opportunity is opening -- your dreams can become manifest with positive thinking. (Or some such. Don't ask me I'm not a numerologist. I'm just trying to find cute ways to count down to Oscar, okay?)

In other words those current long shot Oscar campaigns need to be harnessing all their positive thinking on this very day! So tell us your #1 dream for Oscar night this coming March 4th. What reality shall you will into being, nomination-wise or statue win? You know mine already. 

Three can't-miss movies directed by women on the festival circuit

our continuing adventures at TIFF with a little NYFF thrown in.

This year I made a conscious effort to see films directed by women at the Toronto International Film Festival. Nearly half of the films I screened had women behind the camera! Even though a few of them were unsatisfying, a handful were gems so praise be to TIFF that there were so many to choose from. Other festivals haven't been as inclusive. We've already discussed the tragic romance of Mary Shelley, the visually stunning The Breadwinner, the what-were-they-thinking Kings, the confounding but admirably crafted Zama, the dramatic misfire of Euphoria, and Hungary's strange and totally involving Oscar submission On Body and Soul.

I saved the three best for last. If you get a chance to see Western (playing at NYFF September 30th and October 1st), the Austrian costume drama Mademoiselle Paradis, or a hard to describe miracle from Indonesia called The Seen and the Unseen please take it. Unfortunately none currently have US release dates (though Western does apparently have some sort of stateside distribution planned for 2018). We'll take them alphabetically after the jump...

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Michael Ballhaus (1935-2017)

by Nathaniel R

It is with great sadness that we share the news of the passing of German cinematographer Michael Ballhaus. The 81 year old artist was a crucial figure in making me the movie maniac that I am today. Michelle Pfeiffer on the piano top in The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989) -- hell the entire movie -- being a defining image in my life, after which I went from enthusiastic regular moviegoer to celluloid-devouring obsessive.

Ballhaus had retired after Martin Scorsese's The Departed (2006) making only one German movie in the last decade of his life and we had hoped each year that he'd be announced as an Honorary Oscar recipient. His three scant nominations -- The Fabulous Baker Boys, Broadcast News, and Gangs of New York -- do no justice to his long and gorgeous career. That's because they don't feel representative of his career as a whole and because, apart from his crowning glory (Baker Boys -- which ought to have walked away with Cinematography in just about any year, let alone 1989) aren't even his best work.

Ballhaus and Fassbinder worked together all through the 70s

Ballhaus got his start as a young man of 24 in German television but quickly graduated to features...

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Second Take: François Ozon's Ravishing "Frantz"

Editor's Note: Nathaniel previously reviewed Frantz at TIFF. Now with its US release a week away, here's Eric with a second look.

Frantz, director François Ozon’s most recent picture, opens in limited release in one week and is also part of Lincoln Center’s current "Rendezvous with French Cinema" series.  Ozon is one of France’s most profilic filmmakers (he makes a film almost every year), and he’s given us many fine pictures, including the Charlotte Rampling chillers Swimming Pool and Under the Sand, the actressy 8 Women, and his deepest film, Time to Leave.  But Ozon has never made a film as ravishing and complete as Frantz.

This film, which was nominated for 11 César Awards and won the Cinematography prize at the ceremony, contains a simple story which keeps unfolding in complex and surprising ways....

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