"Flee", "Worst Person...", and more join the Best International Feature Film Oscar competition

by Nathaniel R

It's official. Finally. Two truly excellent Scandinavian films are joining the Oscar competition. Norway's Cannes sensation Worst Person in the World, a romantic dramedy from the great Joachim Trier (Reprise, Oslo August 31st, Thelma), and the animated documentary Flee about a gay Afghan refugee who made his home in Denmark are now officially in the hunt for Oscar glory. The Best International Feature Film category is always hugely competitive and the voting system is complex so there are never any "locks" but both films have a headstart at making the 15 wide finalist list; they're already widely seen and wildly acclaimed from their multiple festival outings. Flee will actually be gunning for multiple nominations as it could theoretically compete for the two other specialty feature categories:  Documentary and Animated Feature.

Norway and Denmark aren't the only countries to announce over the past few days. After the jump twelve other Oscar hopefuls from around the Globe...

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SXSW: Portraits of motherhood in "Ninjababy" and "Bantú Mama"

by Cláudio Alves

Motherhood is one of cinema's favorite subjects, ever since narrative pictures emerged as a force to be contended with. One can go so far as saying that ever since the origins of drama, of storytelling, tales of mothers have dominated audiences' attentions, defined cultures, were made into the foundations for moral and religious belief. Perhaps because of such history, such conceptual weight, mainstream cinema rarely attempts to subvert or question the precepts of dramatized maternity. Even in more independent circuits, there's still reverence there, a willingness to prop up the mother figure into a saintly paragon, idealized caretaker, matriarch of humanity.

Because of it, one feels grateful when artists turn their back on all that baggage and decide to subvert what cinematic mothers are, what they look like, what they represent. The irreverent Ninjababy and the beautiful Bantú Mama, both presented at the SXSW film festival, are prime examples of this…

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Best International Feature: Denmark, Hong Kong, Norway

by Cláudio Alves

With the shortlists announced, we now know which of the 93 Best International Feature submissions still have a chance to contend for Oscar gold. AMPAS has selected 15 finalists, a third of which will be honored with an Academy Award nomination come March 15th. Here at The Film Experience, the team has reviewed most of the shortlisted titles. However, four still haven't been analyzed. To start correcting that, here's another trio of capsule reviews. It's time to explore the pictures submitted by Denmark, Hong Kong, and Norway… 

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Showbiz History: Casablanca, The King's Speech, and "We Found Love"

5 random things that happened on this day in showbiz history

1937 Nothing Sacred, one of the great screwball comedies of the 30s (but there are so many of them, he said with glee) opens in theaters after its NYC premiere the previous day. It was a personal favourite of Carole Lombard so in addition to being a genius actress, she had good taste in her own work. 

1942 Casablanca premieres in NYC. It has one of the weirdest Oscar timetables ever for a Best Picture winner...

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"Hope" and Norway's Oscar History

by Nathaniel R

The Norwegian Film Institute has selected Maria Sødahl's cancer drama Hope to represent them at the Oscars. The film stars Bræn Hovig and the ever-ubiquitous Stellan Skarsgård (who works as often in Scandinavia as he does in Hollywood, which is to say, a lot) as the couple thrown by a terrible diagnosis. Hope was selected over two other finalists which were: Disco by Jorunn Myklebust Syversen about a young girl mixed up with a Christian cult (which we reviewed at TIFF last fall), and Margreth Olin's documentary The Self Portrait about an acclaimed photographer struggling with anorexia. (Olin was submitted 11 years ago for her second narrative feature Angel though she's primarily a documentarian.)

1987 Norwegian nominee "Pathfinder"Norway has been perpetually overshadowed by Sweden and Denmark in terms of the cinema. They have a smaller film industry than their Scandinavian neighbors but the other problem is a noticeable lack of internationally-adored auteurs. We hoped that the rise of Joachim Trier would change that but, alas, the Oscars aren't helping in that regard as he's been submitted twice from his three Norwegian language films and the Academy passed both times.

Oscar stats and great Norwegian films after the jump...

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